Save The Bay's Trash Contest: Fun with Garbage

By Stephen Knight, Political Director

If you are reading this, you already know that trash is a serious pollution threat to people and wildlife in San Francisco Bay. This year, Save The Bay's annual Bay Trash Hot Spots lists 225 creeks and shoreline areas identified by the cities themselves as having high levels of plastic bags, cigarette butts, fast food containers, old tires and more. Trash is a dangerous pollutant that harms wildlife, spoils water quality, threatens public health, and smothers sensitive wetland habitat.

In short, trash is a drag.

But we wanted to have some fun with trash this year. So we’re having a trash cleanup contest! Save The Bay is asking you to vote for one of seven selected Bay Trash Hot Spots for us to "adopt" and clean up in 2011. The contest sites were chosen based on several criteria, including proximity to heavily-used areas and major transportation corridors, habitat for endangered species, and Clean Water Act violations – and geographic distribution around the Bay Area.

So please vote for your favorite trash hot spot at www.saveSFbay.org/baytrash. And tell your friends – you don’t want your favorite spot to lose, right?

The contest sites are:

1. Damon Slough – if you drive 880, you know this spot. It is a mess, in part because it flows next to the Oakland Coliseum and Oracle Arena parking lots. I’m not blaming the Raider Nation – unless the can control the wind.

2. The Hayward Regional Shoreline, near where we are working to at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve to restore critical habitat for wildlife – not for garbage.

3. Fremont’s Mission Creek flows through the city’s Central Park, a major recreational area.

4. If you are tired of seeing San Jose’s Coyote Creek on our Bay Trash Hot Spot list, then vote for this spot and we’ll help clean it up.

5. The Guadalupe Slough Baylands are located within sensitive marsh habitat directly adjacent to the Bay. Bay critters do NOT like trash!

6. Redwood Creek flows through downtown Redwood City and accumulates trash from commercial and residential corridors. The creek is next to Bair Island, part of the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge which is being restored to tidal wetlands. Plastic and tidal wetlands do not mix!

7. Colma Creek flows through a variety of urban areas in South San Francisco and San Mateo County, including major commercial zones, high-traffic areas, and pedestrian corridors. Picking up trash all along the way.

While we try to have some fun with trash this year, Save The Bay is committed to working with cities to help stop trash at its source – by passing bans or fees on commonly littered items such as plastic bags, Styrofoam and cigarette butts, and installing storm drains devices to stop trash from flowing to the Bay and ocean. The most common litter items picked up in California last year included cigarette butts, food wrappers and containers and plastic bags. In fact, Save The Bay estimates that more than one million plastic bags pollute the Bay each year. Yuck.

The 225 hot spots come from new Water Board regulations require cities to eliminate hundreds of trash hot spots around the Bay. Cities in Santa Clara County identified 74 trash hot spots, with Alameda County cities picking 69 trash hot spots to call their own. There are 49 hot spots in Contra Costa County, and cities in San Mateo County submitted 31 hot spots to the Water Board. Fairfield, Suisun City and Vallejo are the three cities in Solano County that must comply with the Water Board's provisions – these three cities selected a total of 10 trash hot spots.

We are excited that our Bay Trash Hot Spots event has grown over the years and is now the cities themselves (who never liked our calling out sites in their community, and who can blame them) that are identifying these trash-filled spots. So please, vote today and stand with Save The Bay against trash.

Dead End Ahead for Cargill

By Josh Sonnenfeld, Campaign Manager

Sign the petition to stop Cargill and help us meet the goal to get 5,000 signatures by spreading the word to your friends!

Things keep getting worse and worse for Cargill and their Arizona-based luxury homes developer in their attempt to fill in 1,436 acres of San Francisco Bay salt ponds.

Not only have more than 140 elected officials from around the region come out against the project, but so have the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News. An editorial in today’s San Mateo Daily Journal describing Cargill’s “overambitious plan” warns of “a long and contentious road ahead” if they continue on their current path.

This follows recent statements from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Water Board, and the EPA – three of the agencies Cargill would need permits from for their project to be approved – noting the importance of protecting and restoring the Redwood City salt ponds.

And today Save the Bay is proud to announce our new website – DontPaveMyBay.org – to ratchet up the pressure on Cargill and the Redwood City Council. While the support of elected officials, newspapers, and strong statements from regulatory agencies are big boosts to our work – we know that to beat America’s largest private company, we need everyone in the Bay Area on board. Will you help us?

NOW is the time for you to stand up to stop Cargill from paving our Bay! We need 5,000 signatures by August 16 to show Redwood City Council there is widespread opposition to Cargill's proposed development and convince them to stop this project in its tracks. Please sign the petition and spread the word at www.DontPaveMyBay.org! Please promote this on your Facebook and Twitter pages also.

Cargill’s development is 17 times bigger than any other bay fill project approved in the past 50 years. It is, by far, the largest proposal on the San Francisco Bay since the introduction of environmental regulations in the early ‘60s. Now is the time for the entire region to show that our bay is not for filling – but for the health and enjoyment of all.

Virtual Saltworks -- See the Cargill salt ponds' past, present and possible future

By Amy Ricard, Communications Associate

A couple of months ago, Save The Bay was approached by Karin Tuxen Bettman, a wetland scientist and Redwood City resident concerned about Cargill's plan to pave over and develop over 1,400 acres of former salt ponds – an area that once belonged to the Bay and a huge swath of Bay shoreline that can and should be restored to wetlands. Knowing the immeasurable benefits of wetlands and tidal marsh in maintaining a healthy Bay ecosystem, as well as in protecting communities from the threat of sea level rise, Bettman decided it was time to get involved.

Bettman currently works at Google helping non-profit organizations use Google Earth to achieve specific goals and convey messages, so her involvement with this project was a perfect fit. Over the course of several weeks, she worked with Save The Bay to develop a website that would take users on a virtual tour of the site, underscoring its history as tidal marsh in addition to the importance of the habitat it currently provides for wildlife and the myriad ways restoring the site would benefit both the Bay and the region.

Bettman's project – Virtual Saltworks – launched a couple of weeks ago and has since been featured in an article published in Bay Nature and the Bay Citizen.

Check out Virtual Saltworks and learn more about the history of the Cargill site and how you can get involved in the fight to save this critical piece of the Bay.

Wood doing good

This is a guest post written by Nate Ivy, Coordinator of the Service-Learning Waste Reduction Project (SLWRP) -- a joint venture between StopWaste.org and the Alameda County Office of Education. Students at Wood Middle School recently organized their 2nd Annual Beach Clean-Up as part of their participation in the program. These same kids have also participated in Save The Bay field trips to learn more about their watershed and the ways in which their actions impact the health of the Bay.

Enjoy the post!

Wood Middle School 2nd Annual Beach Clean-Up

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

At first glance, Crown Memorial Beach in Alameda appears to be a clean, pleasant retreat highlighted by sweeping views of San Francisco. Unlike many other public shorelines along the San Francisco Bay, Crown Beach does not appear on a list of Trash Hot Spots. However, students from Wood Middle School in Alameda discovered that looks can be deceiving as they participated in their 2nd annual microscopic beach clean-up.

Designed by science teacher Jeannette Frechou, the microscopic clean-up focuses on small bits of plastic that birds and other animals often confuse for bite sized bits of food. A close examination of the high tide line reveals a smorgasbord of multicolored plastics that easily float on the surface of the water.

"People are jerks! Who would do something like this?" one student declares.

In fact, students found many bits of debris from products they themselves use. Data tracking sheets reported the collection of plastic forks, bottle caps, salsa packets, and even a small plastic army man.

"We all do it," replies another. "It's not like people come and throw this on the beach... every piece of litter that falls on the ground or out of our car door gets washed down to the beach. We all have to be more careful." As if to emphasize the source of litter, a storm drain outlet peeks out of the receeding tide- connected to a storm drain one block from school labeled, "No Dumping! Drains to Bay."

This year, students have been working to do more than just be more careful with litter they produce, they have been studying choices that help to eliminate waste before it is produced. Staff and students from Wood Middle School have engaged in a partnership with the Alameda County Office of Education and Save The Bay to address marine debris through a grant provided by NOAA.

Earlier this year, students wrote letters to the editor addressing the challenge of candy wrappers entering the ecosystem at Halloween. In a study of healthy eating, students observed that healthier food choices usually use less packaging and benefit both human and environmental health. In just 60 seconds, one participant picked up 13 soda bottle caps along the tideline highlighting the challenges to our health and our environment.

Frechou helped students make further connections at the beach as she pointed out a tar ball, likely a legacy of the Cosco Busan oil spill of 2007. "Plastic is made from oil. We use a huge amount of oil to transport so many of the things we buy from all around the world. To help avoid spills in the future, we need to use less oil and less plastic."

Ms. VerDuin, another participating teacher from Wood, plans to use the beach clean up activity as a starting point for a discussion on marine debris, oceanic currents, the Pacific Garbage patch and the impact of plastic on wildlife. "There is a disturbing series of photos from Chris Jordan taken at Midway Atoll that shows birds killed by bits of plastic just like the ones we are cleaning up today. The clean-up activity will really help students connect to this global problem."

Click here to see the original post, complete with photos!

In with the new, out with the old

By Darcie Goodman Collins, Ph.D., Habitat Restoration Director

As Save The Bay's Habitat Restoration Director, I am extremely proud of my team and the 3400 + volunteers who conquered a rainy winter for a successful planting season!

Since the start of our planting season, which begins as soon as the rains come – this year it was September – community members and school groups have assisted Save The Bay in transplanting 25,532 native salt marsh plants at our numerous sites around the Bay.

At Save The Bay, we involve volunteers in every step of the restoration process. They help us collect seeds from native salt marsh plants such as gumplant, salt grass, sea lavender and California Poppies at least one year before they are ready to be planted. Volunteers help us grow all of our plants in our two native plant nurseries, and then finish the job by actually getting the plants into the ground.

Although these plants are local and have adapted to living in the marsh ecosystem, a rainy year such as this one is a blessing for wetland restoration. Ample rain and moist soils help give the newly planted vegetation an extra boost in their new marsh home. And this year, the wet conditions have expedited our ability to meet and exceed our goal to plant 25,000 native seedlings around the Bay!

So what do we do now? With a successful planting season completed, our staff and volunteers are busy making sure our newly planted seedlings are thriving in their new environment. This includes removing invasive plants to reduce competition and in drier seasons, may even involve some hand watering.

General maintenance of our sites coupled with science-based restoration techniques developed by Save The Bay experts over the past 11 years has resulted in over 100 acres of restored and enhanced tidal marsh around the Bay.

Save The Bay’s restoration efforts focus specifically on the important, yet narrow, “transition zone” which is a strip of vegetation (usually less than 30 feet wide) between two types of habitat. In this case, the transition zones we restore border the salt marsh and the upland system. A healthy transition zone is vital for the overall well-being of the marsh because it provides refuge for wildlife during flood events, a food source for marsh species, and also acts as natural buffers to protect the surrounding lands from sea level rise.

I could talk all day about Save The Bay's Community-based Restoration program and the importance of our work in maintaining a healthy Bay eco-system. But for now, if you are interested, please visit our website for more information.

Cargill developer "myths" debunked

By Stephen Knight, Political Director

Recent blog and Twitter posts by Cargill's Redwood City developer DMB state, "there’s been a lot of misinformation and half-truths being circulated out there."

No kidding.

Openly concerned about the attention being paid to their unprecedented plans to build a new city in the Bay, the increasingly desperate developer is clumsily attempting to erase many simple and inconvenient facts by claiming that they are "myths."

But the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary.

Did Cargill not tell their Arizona-based development partner these basic facts about their Bay property? You be the judge:

--> Astonishingly, Cargill’s developer claims it is a "myth" that the site "was diked off from tidal action to create salt evaporation ponds." This property is former tidal marsh, diked off from the Bay to make salt. Is there another way to make a salt pond? Just look at this 1943 aerial photograph.

--> DMB says it is a "myth" that site is located within a FEMA flood plain. Apparently they have not seen Redwood City's General Plan. (Redwood City General Plan Map, page BE-54).

--> Cargill's developer refuses to admit that the Redwood City salt ponds are the largest unprotected stretch of restorable bay shoreline because, they say, the site "is privately owned by Cargill." Yet the fact that these salt ponds remain in private ownership defines why they need protection from development.

--> DMB asserts that the current zoning for the site "anticipates future development proposals." In fact, Redwood City's General Plan states of the Cargill salt ponds: "Due to the sensitive nature of these open space areas, it should be assumed that they will remain as open space forever." These salt ponds have never been zoned for housing.

--> Cargill's developer also calls a "myth" the fact that state and federal laws prohibit filling wetlands when alternatives are available. But nobody contests that fact. The US EPA recently called these salt ponds "a critically important aquatic resource that warrant special attention" (EPA letter, Jan. 5, 2010). And Cargill has filed documents with the US Army Corps calling the site "waters of the US" protected by the Clean Water Act.

--> Cargill is running ads on TV and in newspapers telling the Bay Area public that this site is "a century-old industrial facility." Does this look like an industrial facility to you?

--> The developer threatens that the only choice is to approve their massive development, otherwise Cargill will continue making salt. Nobody is telling them not to keep making salt; it is their legal right to do so. But Cargill has already made clear that salt harvesting is no longer economically viable in Redwood City (Paul Shepherd, Cargill Land Manager, letter to Redwood City residents, 2006).

Just as Redwood City voters prevented Bair Island from being developed a generation ago, Cargill’s development must be stopped so that – like Bair Island – it can be added to the Don Edwards SF Bay National Wildlife Refuge and restored to tidal wetlands to benefit people and wildlife.

For more photos and documentation behind the real facts, please visit our Flickr site.

Sowing the Seeds of Change

By Trisha Allen, Education Coordinator and Natalie LaVan, Restoration Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator

When I say service, you say learning: service-learning, service-learning! Three cheers for the 21st Annual National Service Learning Conference.

A few short weeks ago, thousands of youth, teachers, and service-learning practitioners from around the globe gathered at the San Jose Convention Center to get inspired, share ideas, and gain tools for engaging young people in community-service projects across disciplines. The diverse representation of exhibits, workshops, thought sessions, and projects showcased during the three-day conference underscored just what a powerful teaching method service-learning can be.

And just what is service learning, you ask? To put it simply, service-learning is education in action! And the secret to successful service-learning projects lies in a few critical and common ingredients, namely: meaningful reflection, diversity, youth voice, and partnerships. Service-learning builds community and spans cultural and national boundaries and develops young people.

On the second day of the conference, Save The Bay got the chance to show participants how it’s done! About 35 individuals from all corners of the U.S. descended upon the Palo Alto Baylands for a Community-based Restoration Program. With representatives of all backgrounds – from places like Texas, New York, Tennessee and Illinois (just to name a few) – we were able to plant almost 100 native seedlings along the Bay. What's more, the group was able to learn about the key elements of a successful service-learning program and our precious Bay.

Click here for more information and resources about service-learning and the National Youth Leadership Council.

Or better yet, make Save The Bay’s Community-based Restoration Program your next service-learning project. This program engages young people in reinvigorating their communities, learning about wetland ecology and issues affecting the health of the Bay, and literally sowing those seeds of change.

Are you an educator? If so, find out how to this program aligns with curriculum standards and connects to many areas of study.