Sejal Choksi-Chugh is the executive director of San Francisco Baykeeper, which is based in Oakland. “Sand mining is happening right near San Francisco and Treasure Island, but it doesn’t look alarming,” she said. “Most people assume the vessels are doing routine maintenance.” But they aren’t.
Instead, two for-profit companies, Martin Marietta and Lind Marine, continue a decades-long practice of extracting sand from the Bay floor to be used in making concrete and asphalt. The environmental problems associated with this, Choksi-Chugh said, include not only harm being done to native species, such as Dungeness crab, which live and migrate along the sandy floor, but also that this sand is ancient, irreplaceable, and protects the Bay’s shorelines from erosion and sea-level rise.
Read MoreSource: East Bay Express