Baykeeper will soon launch a new project to document and photograph the San Francisco Bay shoreline by boat. Our goal is to provide information that can be used to improve protection for the Bay from pollution and sea level rise.
We will use innovative technology to publish an online “Street View” shoreline map. This will give the public and community groups a way to see close-up views of shoreline that are visible now only from a boat.
Baykeeper recently helped improve new regulations to protect San Francisco Bay from an emerging pollution threat: excess nutrients.
Nutrients are substances such as nitrogen or phosphorus that enter the Bay via treated wastewater discharged into the Bay from the region’s sewage plants. Rain also washes nutrient-rich fertilizers from urban gardens and upstream agricultural lands into the Bay. Excess nutrients can cause certain types of algae to grow, which depletes oxygen needed by fish and other sea life.
In response to advocacy from neighborhood and environmental groups, including San Francisco Baykeeper, the Golden State Warriors basketball team will not build a giant basketball arena on the waterfront of the San Francisco Embarcadero. Baykeeper is pleased that precious open-water views of the Bay from the shore south of the Bay Bridge won’t be blocked by the arena, and construction won’t threaten shoreline habitat.
When Point Molate Beach Park in Richmond reopened officially on April 19, Baykeeper received a big thanks for removing 96 tons of toxic debris from the beach last year. Our cleanup helped make the reopening possible. Next month, Baykeeper and volunteers will return to the park to remove more debris, including contaminated logs that have washed on shore since last year’s cleanup and tires stuck in mud near the shore.
Oldcastle Precast, a manufacturer of concrete products, recently agreed to install pollution controls to protect San Francisco Bay from contaminated runoff from its Pleasanton facility. The agreement came in response to Baykeeper’s Clean Water Act lawsuit and will protect the Bay from pollutants that include heavy metals.
On April 16, a federal appeals court ruled that federal contracts to supply water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem, which promised more water than exists in an average year, were renewed illegally. In a unanimous ruling, an eleven-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Natural Resources Defense Council, San Francisco Baykeeper, and other environmental groups.
When Helen Dickson moved to the Bay Area a year ago, one of the first things she did was to contact Baykeeper and offer to be a Volunteer Pollution Investigator. Since then, she has not only tracked down potential industrial polluters, she’s also helped Baykeeper coordinate our volunteer investigation program.
Just a few months after Baykeeper’s founding in 1989, we received an anonymous tip about illegal dredging that led to a covert investigation, media scandal, retaliatory damage to the Baykeeper boat, a criminal investigation, and finally, jail time for the offenders.
Joining with a coalition of environmental groups, Baykeeper recently helped scuttle a proposal by developers for a new facility to export coal from the Port of Oakland. Coal breaks apart easily, forming dust that contains mercury, arsenic, uranium, and other toxic substances. Transporting millions of tons of coal in mile-long open car trains to the port, and then loading it onto ships, would send toxic dust into San Francisco Bay. It would also further pollute the air of nearby communities already suffering from disproportionate pollution.
California is experiencing one of the driest years on record, and the state is gripped by drought. A lack of rain has major impacts on how we consume freshwater. What does it mean for water quality in the Bay?