San Francisco Baykeeper is looking for an enthusiastic volunteer intern to conduct in-depth research and analysis and develop informational materials related to pollution in San Francisco Bay.

Baykeeper and more than 150 of our supporters recently stood up for San Francisco Bay and against Valero Energy Corporation’s plan to enlarge the rail yard at its Benicia oil refinery.

If Valero gets its way, long trains of tank cars filled with explosion-prone crude oil will run beside Suisun Bay, a San Francisco Bay inlet and important wildlife habitat area. Oil spilled along Suisun Bay's shore could quickly spread throughout San Francisco Bay.

In 2002, Baykeeper compelled Dow Chemical’s Pittsburg plant to keep dangerous toxic chemicals from contaminating Suisun Bay, an inlet of San Francisco Bay.

Dow’s pollution included a long list of chemicals that cause cancer and reproductive harm, including chlorinated solvents. In addition to polluting the Bay, the contamination had reached groundwater four miles upstream from a Contra Costa Water District drinking water intake.

Pacific Rim Recycling in Benicia recently agreed to install controls to keep the recycling facility’s toxic runoff from polluting San Francisco Bay. Baykeeper brought suit under the Clean Water Act based on Pacific Rim’s reports of tests of its runoff. The testing showed that the facility was releasing high levels of pollutants such as oil, grease, copper, lead, and aluminum into Carquinez Strait, which flows into the Bay.

The 35-mile tunnels proposed to carry freshwater from the northern end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to pumps on the southern end would harm San Francisco Bay. Baykeeper recently took action against the controversial $25-billion project by submitting comments opposing the Delta tunnels in the public review process for the proposal, which is officially known as the Bay Conservation Development Plan (BCDP).

In 2000, Baykeeper and a coalition of neighborhood and environmental groups won crucial changes in the redevelopment of San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood. In a major win for San Francisco Bay and the Mission Bay neighborhood, the changes prevented annual overflows of 30 million gallons of sewage and contaminated rainwater into the Bay, and improved habitat along Islais Creek.

Sewer agencies serving nine East Bay cities have agreed to major upgrades to keep hundreds of millions of gallons of raw and undertreated sewage from polluting San Francisco Bay. The improvements will ultimately end the current practice of releasing massive amounts of undertreated sewage from the cities into the Bay during rainy weather.

In 1998, Baykeeper and our partners won a great victory for San Francisco Bay when we compelled two oil refineries to stop contaminating the Bay with selenium. The refinery owners, oil giants Unocal and Exxon, also paid $4.8 million in penalties. The funds were used for projects that included restoring 45 square miles of Bay wetlands and habitat along creeks and rivers that flow into the Bay.

In a major victory for protecting California waterways from oil spills, a new state law will provide the state’s rivers, lakes, and creeks with oil spill protections previously given only to the state’s coastal waters. The law also ensures continued funding for the California agency that rescues wildlife injured by an oil spill. San Francisco Baykeeper helped orchestrate the passage of the bill.

On July 8, Baykeeper filed an appeal in our lawsuit to stop excessive sand mining in San Francisco Bay. For years, private companies have been permitted to mine too much sand from the Bay, contributing to erosion at Ocean Beach and harming important Bay species like Dungeness crab. Yet in 2012, the California agency that oversees sand mining, the State Lands Commission, approved a large increase in Bay sand mining. Baykeeper then filed suit to stop the increase.