The Gov signs our wetlands bill!

by Jessica Castelli, Communications Director

Originally posted on October 2, 2008

The Save The Bay staff is jumping up and down in excitement and celebratory orange and blue streamers are hanging from our hallways—we are celebrating a landmark win for San Francisco Bay wetlands!

Late Tuesday night Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 2954, establishing the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority to secure crucial funding to restore Bay wetlands. Creating this Authority is the primary recommendation in Save The Bay's ground-breaking August 2007 "Greening the Bay" report. And the policy team has been working very hard over the past year to make this bill a reality!

Scientists say that establishing 100,000 acres of wetlands is essential to a healthy, sustainable Bay. However, securing the funding necessary to pay for restoration has been the biggest obstacle to reaching this goal. Now with the enactment of AB 2954, the 100,000 acre goal is in reach! The next step is for the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to appoint seven board members to the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, to being exploring ways to secure regional funding for wetland restoration.

Assembly Speaker pro Tem Sally Lieber (the bill's author) said it well: "It's our responsibility to take care of and restore San Francisco Bay, one of our State's most valuable and beautiful natural treasures. Our greatest asset is also one of our greatest protections against the impacts of global warming. Our bay wetlands provide natural flood control and capture greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere."

Thank you to everyone who took our action and asked the Governor to sign AB 2954—your voice made a difference! We'd like to ask you to also send a thank you message to the Governor. He vetoed a heck of a lot of bills this year and we want to thank him for signing this one.

A landmark step for wetlands

by David Lewis, Executive Director

Originally posted on September 23, 2008

Right now a landmark bill for wetlands is in limbo waiting the Governor’s signature.

Forty years ago, public outcry put a badly needed end to the slow destruction of San Francisco Bay from widespread filling and development. Indeed, the Bay as we know it now is a monument to that victory. Today, we have a significant opportunity to build on that legacy and ensure that future generations can enjoy the economic and ecological benefits of the Bay. The key lies in making smart investments to restore thousands of acres of salt ponds and diked hayfields to tidal wetlands

Only five percent of the Bay’s original wetlands remain&mdashrestoring more wetlands is vital to support endangered species, combat global warming, filter pollutants from the water, protect communities against flooding, and provide open space.

In 1999, scientists created a regional blueprint for restoring Bay wetlands, including 100,000 acres of restored tidal marsh at sites where it was still possible. Large shoreline parcels were acquired to pursue this blueprint, from salt ponds in San Jose to hayfields near Petaluma. Although state and federal resource agencies and private foundations have already invested at least $370 million, a broad long-term commitment supported by public and private interests is needed to preserve the Bay.

Save The Bay’s Greening the Bay report documents for the first time the total projected cost of these restoration projects, finds strong public willingness to pay that cost, and recommends ways to secure the necessary funds. The report states that over 50 years, $1.43 billion of investment will be required to fully restore more than 36,000 acres of tidal marsh. That’s only about $4 annually per area resident. We have the will and the wallet – what we lack is a way to translate this strong regional support into steady funding for restoration of Bay wetlands.

That's why Save The Bay sponsored California Assembly Bill 2954, which establishes the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, a special district that can raise funds and make grants to restore tidal wetlands in San Francisco Bay, without new costs to the state. Currently, this bill has passed the California Legislature and is waiting to be signed by our Governor.

Over the last four decades, Bay Area residents have overcome tremendous odds to prevent the Bay from being destroyed. By developing a long-term Bay wetlands restoration plan now, we can make the Bay healthier for people and wildlife long into the future.

Please help by telling the Governor to sign this landmark wetlands bill.

Trash talk gets tough

by Laura Reinhard, Policy Associate

Originally posted on September 19, 2008

A few days ago as I was enjoying my morning coffee, I overheard a funny conversation between a pair of cyclists in San Mateo. They had just finished their post-ride sandwiches. 

      “Hey, you’re not going to throw away that plastic bag, are you?”

            “Well, I don’t really need it. They just gave it to me with my leftovers.”

      “Give it to me! Those things are like gold in San Francisco now.”

As a result of San Francisco’s recent ban on plastic bags San Franciscans are saving and re-using plastic bags instead of throwing them away—where they often wind up in our creeks, Bay and ocean. This result is exactly what environmental advocates have been encouraging for decades.  Yet often our local, state and federal governments opt for the easy-out—the “public education” approach—shying away from the controversy of putting laws on the books.

Overhearing this exchange brought home to me just how effective public policy can be in changing our behavior. “Public education”, while important, won’t be enough without effective regulation. The problem of marine debris and plastics pollution seems so much bigger than our family’s grocery bags. Often, we don’t feel like our actions matter enough to warrant changing our behavior. But that’s the point of legislation—to help us, en masse, to do the right thing—even when we can’t always see the impact for ourselves. San Francisco’s ban has made plastic bags less plentiful and disposable. More people are switching to reusable bags, keeping millions of plastic bags out of the Bay and ocean, and ultimately out of the stomachs of seals, turtles, and birds.

Despite massive public outcry over plastic pollution in our bays and oceans, many Bay Area cities are lobbying hard to block regulation aimed at stopping trash flows into the Bay. Unfortunately, they might be winning. The San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) has the authority to require cities to stop the daily flood of trash into the Bay from polluted creeks and rivers. The Water Board can set limits on the amount of pollution cities can discharge into the Bay when they re-write the storm water permit this Fall, Save The Bay wants a strong permit that requires measurable, enforceable reductions in trash pollution. Cities and counties, on the other hand, want a weak permit, with toothless regulations on trash. We won’t know if their lobbying efforts are paying off until we review the next permit draft when it is released in a few weeks.

Most of us have no idea how the Water Board seriously affects our lives and environment, but they are a critical regulator of pollution. Trash in the Bay affects our quality of life, not just the lives of sea birds and seals. That’s why there’s never been a better time to speak up and tell the Water Board that you want a strong storm water permit. We’ve been flushing our trash into the Bay for long enough. It’s time to get strong trash pollution laws on the books.

Bay Trash--Threatening Damon Slough and shorelines near you!

by Amy Alton, Communications Associate


Originally posted on September 17, 2008

If you’ve ever taken BART to an event at Oracle Arena or McAfee Coliseum, you have crossed over it. If you’ve ever traveled in or out of the Oakland Airport, you’ve flown over it. And if you live in East Oakland, your neighborhood storm drain connects right to it. I’m talking about Damon Slough. A thriving habitat flowing around the Coliseum and running alongside the Nimitz Freeway, Damon Slough in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline Park opens up to Arrowhead Marsh and is home to several species of native plants, including pickleweed and arrowgrass, and endangered wildlife like the California clapper rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse. It’s also home to unsightly masses of trash and debris.

At Save The Bay, we call it a “Bay Trash Hot Spot.” In fact, for the last three years we have compiled a list of some the Bay Area’s trashiest waterways to call attention to this problem and Damon Slough has been on the list for three years running. One of the few, three-time repeat offenders, Damon Slough in its current state is particularly disturbing given it has all the makings of the proverbial Cinderella story.

In the 1980’s, crews from the Port of Oakland began dumping fill into the northeast side of the marsh. Fortunately the commotion caught the attention of East Bay Regional Park District staff and they contacted the authorities. After a successful lawsuit headed by the Golden Gate Audubon Society, Save The Bay, and the Sierra Club, $2.5 million dollars were allocated for restoration of this 72-acre wetland.

Since 2000, Save The Bay has partnered with East Bay Regional Park District to work with schools, community groups and corporations to restore wetland habitat along Damon Slough. Part of that effort includes shoreline cleanups to pick up trash and debris from urban runoff, litter, and dumping. To date, our volunteers have removed over 20,000 pounds of trash and recyclables!

Even so, Damon Slough is repeatedly inundated with plastic bags, Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, bottle caps, car batteries, shopping carts, industrial waste, and old electronics.

While Damon Slough is of particular concern, trash accumulates in massive amounts all over the Bay, choking wetlands, poisoning and entangling wildlife, and harming water quality. A 2005 assessment by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) found an average of three pieces of trash along every foot of streams that lead to the Bay. And this trash also has global ramifications; it flows out the Golden Gate to form part of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”—a floating island of trash the size of Texas.

So what can we do? The good news is that because we create this pollution, we have the power to diminish it. We can:

Reduce the amount of trash we generate and make sure our trash doesn't end up in the Bay.

Dispose properly of hazardous waste, switch to reusable bags, and recycle and compost when we can.

Advocate for tougher policies and regulations to reduce trash flowing to the Bay. In fact, the Water Board has the opportunity to stop trash from fouling the Bay as they vote this fall to renew the storm water permit. Save The Bay is working to ensure that the permit limits the amount of trash cities and counties discharge into the Bay.

Volunteer to clean up and restore the Bay shoreline. Save The Bay hosts monthly cleanup and restoration events at several sites around San Francisco Bay. This Saturday, nearly 100 Save The Bay volunteers will clean up hot spot Damon Slough at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland, as part of the Coastal Commission’s 24th annual Coastal Cleanup Day.