From 2012 to 2017, the Greener Pesticides for Cleaner Waterways project addressed water bodies impaired for pesticide toxicity through outreach and education to residential home and garden pesticide users.Read More
In 2012, the City of Fremont installed two Tree Well Filters (TWFs) on Osgood Road to improve city aesthetics and treat urban runoff. Two distinct TWFs configurations were designed and built side-by-side so that they could be tested against one another for efficacy of pollutant removal and maintenance costs. The San Francisco Estuary Institute monitored...Read More
In 2013, the San Francisco Estuary Partnership announced the launch of the Small and Micro Grants Program to help protect and improve watershed health around the San Francisco Estuary. The total amount available for 2013 was $50,000 for both small grants (up to $5,000) and micro-grants (up to $1,000).Read More
PCBs–polychlorinated biphenyls–are a probable human carcinogen and may be causing reproductive failure in birds and affecting immune response in harbor seals in the Estuary. SFEP’s PCBs in Caulk Project was created to address potential impacts of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in caulks and sealants released into stormwater runoff during demolition or remodeling projects in the San...Read More
Corte Madera Marsh Ecological Reserve in Marin County is exposed to wind waves, ringed with both historic and restored wetlands, and has a history of erosion and flooding. All of these factors make lower Corte Madera Creek an ideal test site for new climate change adaptation research.Read More
The El Cerrito Green Streets Pilot Project officially concluded on November 30, 2012. Click on these links to view or download the Final Project Report, the Final Water Quality Monitoring Report, and the As-Built Construction Documents. This successful project retrofitted the conventional public right-of-way (street edge and sidewalk area) with a series of stormwater treatment...Read More
The restoration of Yosemite Slough will create the largest contiguous wetland area in the County of San Francisco. The project will help restore essential wildlife habitat, improve water quality, and prevent erosion along the shoreline of the City of San Francisco—an area of the bay where tidal wetlands have been most impacted and suffered the...Read More
Partner agencies are implementing a Long-Term Management Strategy (LTMS) for the Placement of Dredged Materials in the San Francisco Bay Region focused on reusing dredged materials in a beneficial way—for example, to restore wetlands. The LTMS was developed in the 1990s by Bay Area regulatory agencies, resource agencies, and others, with the goal of reducing...Read More
On January 27, 2011, a bold vision for the hidden part of the Bay was released. Working together, the California State Coastal Conservancy and Ocean Protection Council, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, BCDC, and the Estuary Partnership have uncovered significant findings based on pioneering new exploration and mapping of heretofore “hidden” aspects of the Estuary....Read More
Since the earliest days of human habitation in the San Francisco Bay Area, the mouths of the region’s many creeks have been valued for their rich ecology and the abundance of plant and animal species. These natural deltas received sediment from the erosive hills upstream, and supported vast expanses of tidal marshlands. With European settlement,...Read More
Sediment and pathogens pollute some key Bay Area watersheds, including lands draining to the Napa River, Sonoma Creek, and Richardson Bay. The SF Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board has adopted action plans to address these issues (“Total Maximum Daily Loads,” or TMDLs). SFEP is working with a number of partners, coordinated by the North Bay...Read More
[Final Project Report Now Available] SFEP’s trash capture demonstration project concluded, according to grant guidelines, in November 2013. The project installed 4,003 trash capture devices, including 42 high-capacity devices, in more than 60 Bay Area municipalities, including cities, towns, and unincorporated county areas. Federal stimulus funds (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) and state...Read More
Community members and City staff implemented the design for a green streetscape by planting trees and other drought tolerant plants, installing specially designed stormwater-filtering planters to infiltrate stormwater runoff, installing traffic calming chicanes, and by creating community gathering places. Since the construction has been completed, SFEI has worked with the City and County of San...Read More
This portion of the Bahia Marsh was filled with dredged bay mud, dried, and compacted in the early 2000’s and prepared for development. Once plans for development fell through, the area was abandoned and subsequently purchased by the MAS. Compacted bay mud makes for incredibly poor site conditions, making restoration very difficult. The goal of...Read More
Extensive tidal wetlands and marshes once almost covered South San Francisco Bay below the present-day Dumbarton Bridge. For the last 150 years these wetlands have received mercury-laden drainage from the New Almaden mercury mining district, in the upper reaches of the Guadalupe River watershed. Salt pond construction in the last century buried mercury-contaminated sediments. But restoration poses...Read More
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Suess and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.