Category: Policy Update

This Tuesday, after a dramatic multi-week negotiation, Oakland City Council passed the “Oakland Together Budget”. Supporters of Save The Bay, along with many others, called Council Members, emailed the Council and City staff, and attended meetings to ask the City for funding to address Oakland’s greatest needs. The resulting budget will steer the course of Oakland’s work for the next two years, determining how far the City goes to address pollution, local flooding, sea level rise, and many other critical issues.

Wins for the Bay
A few highlights in the new budget will benefit the community by helping to keep pollution off of city streets, and out of creeks, Lake Merritt, and the Bay:

1. Continued funding for Oakland’s illegal dumping crews and the addition of one more team: Oakland’s illegal dumping crew program has been incredibly successful, with crews responding to tens of thousands of requests every year. These crews remove large and small trash items like abandoned furniture and mattresses from Oakland’s sidewalks and streets. This helps to keep the sidewalks safe for children to walk to school, reduces community blight, and keeps trash and contaminants from flooding and leaching into creeks, streams, and the Bay during rainstorms. The addition of one more team will help keep our communities clean, and help properly dispose of illegally dumped waste before it enters our waterways.
2. $1,000,000 for Downtown Streets Team and other community clean up work: Downtown Streets Team hires unsheltered residents to remove litter from illegal dumping hot spots around the City, while providing employment training and building community among those struggling with displacement. Programs like this help to address pollution in our waterways while providing support for another critical issue facing Oakland residents: displacement and homelessness. After proving to be so successful over the past budget cycle, we are disappointed that these programs won’t see funding until year two in this budget, and we hope other resources can be achieved to continue this work in the interim.

Room for Improvement
While there are a number of exciting achievements, the approved budget does not go far enough to protect our communities and waterways from trash, runoff, and other harmful pollution. There are two key items which need additional funding:

1. More funding is needed for trash capture devices: We are glad to see the inclusion of some funds in the budget to install trash capture devices, which collect trash in the storm drain system and keep it from flowing to the Bay. However, the $250,000 included in the budget will only pay for a fraction of the devices the city needs. The City must spend more than eight times this amount to achieve the pollution controls required by the Clean Water Act, and ongoing maintenance for these devices. More funding for these devices is critical to keep trash out of our creeks, Lake Merritt, and the Bay.
2. An update of the Storm Drainage Master Plan – which remains unfunded – is still a critical step in addressing Oakland’s storm drain needs: Oakland must spend $2 million on an evaluation of the City’s 400 miles of storm drains and pipes that carry polluted water to the Bay. The City’s storm drain system is in a concerning state of disrepair, but no one knows just how bad it is because the last assessment was 13 years ago. Re-evaluating this critical infrastructure was ranked priority # 2 among all of the City’s proposed capital projects, so it is frustrating that the Council chose not to fund this project. Oakland must update their Storm Drainage Master Plan to ensure Oakland’s infrastructure is resilient in the face of climate change, sea level rise, and flooding from large storms.

In addition to these funding needs, we are disappointed to see that a remaining balance of over $400,000 in Oakland’s revenue from their Excess Litter Fee Fund remains unspent in the budget. These funds are collected specifically to prevent trash and litter from entering the City’s storm drain system and polluting our waterways, and they should be allocated as soon as possible to address this pressing need.

What’s Next?
While the budget is set, there are many avenues for Oakland to achieve its work to stop pollution from entering local waterways. Save The Bay will keep pushing the City to find opportunities to increase the number of trash capture devices installed, and to update its Storm Drainage Master Plan.

Save The Bay will also continue to encourage the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to collaborate with Oakland City Council to address trash and runoff on highways that spills over into Oakland communities and waterways. Caltrans, like Oakland, is required to clean up trash from roadways before it enters the storm drain system and eventually the Bay. Caltrans is under a strict enforcement order to carry out this work in the next year (read more here!), and partnering with Oakland will help both Caltrans and Oakland achieve their pollution prevention goals more effectively, more quickly, and at a lower cost than working on this issue alone.

Read this OpEd from our Executive Director, David Lewis originally published on March 27, 2019 in The San Francisco Examiner.

If the A’s take shortcuts that endanger public interests and the environment, they will lose support.

Fielding a winning baseball team is hard, but all teams have to play by the same rules. Building on the Bay shoreline is also hard, because we’ve wisely created rules to protect what we treasure for the public’s benefit.

Those rules preserve natural areas for wildlife, beaches and trails for recreation, ports and airports for commerce. When someone tries to avoid or bend those rules to build on the shoreline, it puts at risk all we’ve improved and protected around the Bay.

The Oakland A’s want to build a new stadium and 4,000 condos at Howard Terminal, plus one million square feet of retail and office space and a 400-room hotel. It’s a particularly challenging and complex location the Port of Oakland currently controls that is reserved for heavy industry and shipping uses, surrounded by a working waterfront employing thousands of people.

Prior uses contaminated the site with toxics, and it lies within the jurisdiction of many different agencies that legally can only permit specific uses there. It’s not served by public transit or easily accessible freeway off-ramps, and is separated from downtown Oakland by Interstate 880 and busy railroad tracks.

We’ve shared directly with Oakland city officials and A’s management our best advice: If they pursue this project following the rules and regulations that protect all of our interests, they could persuade the public and key agencies their ballpark can work at Howard Terminal. But if they try to change the rules and take shortcuts that endanger public interests and the environment, they will lose support.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires major projects to develop and share detailed information on impacts and a analyze alternatives in an environmental impact report for the public to review before any project is approved. The A’s and the City of Oakland started their report process this year with deep flaws and a rushed schedule. By leaving out major project elements and ignoring legal requirements, they will get a defective document that is challenged in court.

Instead of completing a strong report first, the city and team are already in Sacramento pushing a bill to end State Lands Commission and Port of Oakland oversight of Howard Terminal, easing the way for housing in an industrial zone. With that Pandora’s Box open, bills could also weaken the State Department of Toxic Substances Control’s rules prohibiting housing or parks on top of Howard Terminal’s contamination, and gut the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s ability to protect Howard Terminal as a seaport.

It may look like an alphabet soup of agencies and acronyms, but each one exists to protect our public health, economy, and environment – the air we breathe, the water we drink and the Bay that is the heart of our home. The cleaner Bay, improved shoreline and bustling ports we have today prove the wisdom of laws we created to govern development and protect people and wildlife.

These laws and procedures apply to everyone, and our elected representatives should not waive them for special interests, even for beloved institutions like sports teams we’ve cheered for years. Regulatory agencies also can mandate environmental protections and public amenities in a development project, so community benefits the A’s offer now aren’t dropped later — but not if legislators hamper those agencies. That’s why businesses, organized labor, Audubon Society and the Sierra Club are telling Bay Area legislators to keep these laws intact for the Oakland A’s stadium.

Wherever you hope the A’s play baseball in the future, it’s in everyone’s interest for their development proposals to follow the rules, not gut them. The San Francisco Giants tried and failed for decades to build a new stadium. Only after they took the time to build broad community support and follow city and state rules was their shoreline ballpark approved.

Conducting a complete and legally strong environmental impact report would give the public full information to make wise decisions about Howard Terminal. So would supporting public agencies whose rules have protected our interests and San Francisco Bay for a generation, instead of undercutting those rules.

Obey the laws – don’t seek exemptions from them. That’s the winning formula for the A’s, Oakland and the entire Bay Area.

Additional Coverage

A home run? Not quite. Lots of hurdles before the A’s new ballpark rises at Howard Terminal | Mercury News

Cargill and DMB announce new effort to build in the Bay.

As we warned in December, Cargill and developer partner DMB have colluded with the Trump Administration to advance its anti-environment agenda. EPA Administrator Wheeler has issued a jurisdictional determination that the federal Clean Water Act no longer protects Cargill’s salt ponds in Redwood City.

The EPA’s decision is contrary to the law and the facts – EPA’s detailed 2016 review of the salt ponds concluded 1,270 acres of the ponds are in fact “waters of the United States” and deserve the Clean Water Act’s legal protection against filling. U.S. Representative Jackie Speier has publicly released the 2016 review into the Congressional Record – its detailed and thorough analysis is a stark contrast with Wheeler’s decision.

Watch Rep. Speier’s Congressional floor speech.

Cargill and DMB have already announced a new development proposal that will “re-imagine Saltworks.” A decade ago, they proposed building 12,000 luxury homes in the Bay for 25,000 people, but after enormous local and regional opposition to the project’s environmental damage, traffic and other impacts, the city council forced DMB to withdraw the plan in 2012.

Mayor Ian Bain says now the community will oppose new development on the ponds:

“The community wants to see the site restored to wetlands and there’s close to zero appetite for another housing proposal, “Bain said. “The site is not zoned for housing, I don’t want to see it rezoned and that’s still my position. What I would like to happen is I’d like to see Cargill donate or sell the land to a group that would restore it to wetlands.”

Here’s what you need to know, right now. We will continue to keep you informed on how you can take action to prevent new building in the Bay.

1. Cargill and DMB still face huge barriers to new development on the salt ponds

Redwood City zoning and land use designations prohibit development on those ponds, and there’s no appetite in the city for making these types of changes.

California laws protect water, wetlands, and the wildlife that currently use those ponds as critical habitat.

Hundreds of local regional, state and federal leaders are on record over the last decade opposing development on Bay salt ponds, and California’s Governor and Legislature are on record opposing Trump Administration efforts to weaken the Clean Water Act.

2. EPA’s new ruling of “no jurisdiction” is contrary to the law and the facts.

This determination directly contradicts the conclusion of an extensive review and recommendation from EPA Region 9 in 2016, which found that the entire Saltworks site is actually within the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.

The Trump Administration’s erroneous conclusion rewards a private developer’s political intervention to override environmental protection and public interest. It’s a terrible precedent that threatens San Francisco Bay water quality and wetlands and weakens the Clean Water Act.

3. DMB and Cargill colluded with the Trump Administration

These companies are embracing and abetting the Trump Administration’s attacks on the Clean Water Act, federal pollution regulations and enforcement.

The Trump agenda is strongly opposed in the Bay Area and California. Cargill and DMB have hurt their Bay Area business – not helped it – by attacking the nation’s fundamental water pollution law and undermining protections for San Francisco Bay,

These companies also have alienated Redwood City and Bay Area residents and elected officials, whose approval would be needed for any development on Bay salt ponds.

Recent press coverage on this issue includes:

San Mateo Daily Journal

Mercury News

To take action on this issue, sign our petition to the City Council of Redwood City

On February 13, after a seven-hour hearing, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board voted unanimously for an unprecedented Cease and Desist Order against Caltrans. Now the state’s transportation agency must speed up trash removal from freeways and state roads and stop it from polluting creeks and the Bay, or face $25,000-a-day fines.

This extraordinary victory capped off a two year plus advocacy campaign Save The Bay waged, backed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than 75 Bay Area elected officials, partner organizations, and thousands of supporters and action-takers.

Follow along the timeline to victory below.

Save The Bay Campaign Timeline December 2016: At our urging, and backed by thousands of public petition-signers, the Regional Board issued a Notice of Violation to Caltrans for failing to do its job. March 2018: Repeated failures to respond to the Notice of Violation led the Regional Board to direct their staff to develop a draft Cease and Desist Order on Caltrans. April 2018: A hearing was held with Caltrans and the State Senate Budget Subcommittee on Resources, Environmental Protection, Energy and Transportation to address the Notice of Violation. Caltrans failed to present a credible plan to address the issue and clean up the trash. December 2018: The Regional Board issued a draft Cease and Desist Order to compel Caltrans to comply with trash requirements on a specific multi-year schedule and received public comment through mid-January. Save The Bay drove thousands of public comments to the Board. February 2019: VICTORY!   In a seven hour hearing,  Elected officials, Save The Bay staff, and partner organizations spoke in favor of a strong enforcement order to push Caltrans to clean up their trash faster. Caltrans argued that it cannot afford to increase trash control and screening efforts. Caltrans annual budget is more than $13 billion this year. Thanks to strong leadership from Board Chair Terry Young and Vice-Chair Jim McGrath, Board members rejected this argument. Caltrans then made last minute appeals to reduce the acreage covered in the Order and give them more time.  Again, Board members stood firm, specifically highlighting Caltrans’ utter failure to make progress in the last five years. The Board voted 6-0 to adopt a very strong Cease and Desist Order that requires Caltrans to accelerate trash pollution control efforts on freeways, state highways and roads like El Camino Real and San Pablo Avenue. The Board doubled the required area and pace of cleanup Caltrans must complete, beyond what its own staff had recommended in the draft Order.

While this Bay victory is exciting, the work is far from over. We intend to advance this effort with the Legislature and Governor Newsom: integral players in keeping Caltrans funded and accountable to the Order.  

Key Media Links

Caltrans ordered to clean up the roadways or face up to $25,000-a-day fines | San Francisco Chronicle

Caltrans Must Clean Up Trash Along Roads Or Face Steep Fines | KCBS

All that trash on Bay Area highways? Caltrans under threat of fines if it’s not cleaned up | San Francisco Chronicle

Opinion: State must stop Caltrans pollution of San Francisco Bay | Mercury News

Winter Storms Pollute San Francisco Bay Waters With Trash | CBS Local

Caltrans, stop trashing San Francisco Bay | San Francisco Chronicle

We have just learned that the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to give away its power to protect clean water and wetlands in San Francisco Bay and make it easier for Cargill Salt Co. to pave Redwood City salt ponds for luxury homes.

President Trump’s Acting EPA Administrator, Andrew Wheeler, is preparing to declare that Redwood City salt ponds are not “Waters of the U.S.” protected by the Clean Water Act or Rivers and Harbors Act. This action surrenders federal government jurisdiction to regulate or permit development on that site, overturns decades of legal precedent and overrules previous protections supported by Bay Area EPA officials.

In 2012, Redwood City refused to consider Cargill’s massive housing development project on the salt ponds site. The company and its developer partner, DMB Pacific Ventures then pressed federal agencies to waive their legal authority to regulate filling or developing the salt ponds. (see timeline below). Six years later, U.S. EPA Region 9 officials in San Francisco refused to grant the Cargill/DMB request, after conducting extensive research on the Redwood City ponds and reviewing legal precedents.

But Andrew Wheeler has taken control of the company’s request and could complete the federal giveaway to Cargill and DMB with the stroke of a pen this week.

Cargill should withdraw its request now, before the EPA waives federal jurisdiction over the site.

• A Trump EPA finding of “no jurisdiction” will threaten San Francisco Bay water quality and wetlands and weaken the Clean Water Act.
• A Trump EPA finding of “no jurisdiction” rewards a private developer’s political intervention to override environmental protection and public interest, setting a terrible precedent that others will repeat.

Colluding with the Trump Administration’s anti-environment agenda and attacking protections for San Francisco Bay will hurt Cargill and DMB’s Bay Area business – not help:

• Cargill and DMB are alienating Redwood City and Bay Area residents, and elected officials, who would need to approve any development on the ponds.
• Cargill and DMB are embracing and abetting the Trump Administration’s agenda to weaken the Clean Water Act and gut pollution regulations; that agenda is especially unpopular in the Bay Area and California.

If the EPA does waive federal authority to regulate these Bay salt ponds as Waters of the U.S., Cargill and DMB will still face many barriers to developing in the Bay:

• California state laws protect water, wetlands, and the wildlife that currently use those ponds as critical habitat.
• Redwood City zoning and land use designations prohibit development on those ponds.
• Any development on the ponds would require significant changes in state and local laws and policies.

Hundreds of local, regional, state and federal leaders are on record over the last decade opposing development on Bay salt ponds, and California’s Governor and Legislature are on record opposing Trump Administration efforts to weaken the Clean Water Act.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein told a Senate hearing on this topic in 2015, “I’m very concerned about this.  What makes our whole area is the bay, and we do not want it filled in.”

At the same time, U.S. Representative Jackie Speier and 10 Members of Congress said, “Any novel, unilateral re-interpretation of the Clean Water Act must not be created in secret, without opportunity for public input, formal consultation with the EPA or Congressional approval.”

Bay Area residents and all of our region’s federal, state and local leaders must demand that Cargill withdraw its request, and that the EPA continue to uphold the Clean Water Act’s legal protections for San Francisco Bay, including Redwood City salt ponds.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Timeline

Cargill and its developer partner DMB Associates have been pressing federal agencies for this finding of “no jurisdiction” since 2012.

• May 7, 2012 – Cargill/DMB withdraws Saltworks project from the Redwood City after city council committee recommends denying further consideration of the development application that had been pending for 3 years and was still incomplete. Cargill announces it will submit a revised project soon.
• May 30, 2012 – Cargill/DMB asks the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. EPA for a final jurisdictional determination (JD) for the Redwood City salt ponds site, and asserts that the property should not be subject to either the Clean Water Act or Rivers and Harbors Act. The company’s novel legal theory asserts that water in the ponds is not wet.
• February 2015 — 11 Bay Area Members of Congress, led by U.S. Representative Jackie Speier, wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers opposing relinquishing federal jurisdiction over the Redwood City salt ponds. Their letter noted that the ponds had previously been determined to be Waters of the United States, and warned that “any novel, unilateral re-interpretation of the Clean Water Act must not be created in secret, without opportunity for public input, formal consultation with the EPA or Congressional approval.”
• March 18, 2015 – U.S. EPA Region 9 takes over the review of the Clean Water Act JD from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a “Special Case.” Region 9 proceeds to conduct legal, scientific, and site-specific research on the Redwood City ponds and prepare a JD.
• September 13, 2016 – DMB requests a six-month pause by Region 9 in preparing the JD.
• January 2017 – EPA Region 9 sends completed work and recommendation to adopt a final JD to EPA HQ Office of Legal Counsel, but JD is not processed before Trump Administration starts on January 20, 2017.
• February 22, 2017 – DMB Pacific Ventures requests an additional six-month pause in its request for a JD.
• March 30, 2018 — Before resigning in disgrace from the Trump cabinet, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt takes away authority for Clean Water Act Special Case JDs from EPA regional offices and assigns it instead to the EPA Administrator himself.
• December 19, 2018 — Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is preparing this week to waive federal regulations over Cargill’s Redwood City ponds, adopting the company’s unprecedented legal theory extinguishing Clean Water Act jurisdiction over its Redwood City ponds.

Learn more about Save The Bay’s historic battle with Cargill:

Cargill’s 370-page attack on the Bay

Cargill’s 370-page attack on the Bay-Part 2

 

In March of this year, the SF Bay Water Quality Control Board asked their staff to bring back an enforcement order against Caltrans for the agency’s multi-year failure to clean trash from Bay Area highways before it pollutes local creeks and the Bay. Despite this clear and urgent direction, an enforcement order has yet to be presented. That’s why close to 80 local elected officials sent a letter to the Board last week urging them to take action immediately and demand cleaner highways for our region and the Bay.

 

Bay Area voters showed again this week that we understand climate change is upon us, and we will invest to keep our communities and San Francisco Bay safe and healthy. In fact, we are ahead of voters in other parts of California – and that meant some mixed results on priority ballot measures endorsed by Save The Bay Action Fund.

Your votes made a big impact in this election, producing victories on most ballot measures in our Bay Smart Voter Guide, which benefit San Francisco Bay’s people and wildlife in a time of rapid climate change. Together, we passed measures to protect against sea level rise, reduce pollution, improve transit, and enhance open space. This is huge progress, as you can see in the detailed results below.

Unfortunately, Proposition 3, the state water bond, did not secure enough votes for passage statewide despite winning majorities in most of the Bay Area. In a noisy campaign year with a crowded ballot, we and our Prop. 3 partners needed to communicate the facts to more voters around the state.

Too many state voters did not know that Prop. 3 would help the 1 million Californians who lack safe drinking water, restore thousands of acres of wetlands for wildlife, and advance water recycling. Too many forgot about recent severe droughts and floods Prop. 3 would prepare us to survive.

Nevertheless, we know these threats will keep increasing and sea levels will keep rising. Save The Bay is more committed than ever to educating voters and elected officials that we need to invest in San Francisco Bay, the Bay Area, and beyond. With your support, we will

• Advocate even harder for Bay Smart Communities, adapting cities and the Bay to survive climate change, pollute less, and prepare more. We will unite partners to win clean water, better transit, affordable housing, and healthier communities for all.
• Accelerate marsh restoration on the Bay shoreline, to boost wildlife and protect against flooding.
• Keep educating the next generation and all residents to support the Bay as volunteers, voters, and donors.

Thank you for voting for the Bay! Don’t wait until the next election to stay involved:

• Volunteer with us to plant wetlands this fall
• Advocate against trash flowing into the Bay
• And, please donate generously to support all that Save The Bay does.

Those who commute in San Mateo County know how bad the traffic is. If you’ve driven through the 101-92 interchange recently, you know something needs to be done to relieve congestion and improve commute time. To achieve this, we must not only fund highway projects, but also enhance public transit options, support alternative modes of transportation, and connect high-quality transit to affordable housing.

Measure W will do just that by raising $2.4 billion over 30 years for projects that will take thousands of cars off of highways every day, fix potholes and maintain streets throughout the County, and make it safer to travel to schools and employment centers by bike and on foot. Read More

Improvements and upgrades to Bay Area roads and public transit are decades overdue. Not only does this outdated, inefficient, and crumbling infrastructure impact our daily lives—especially for those traveling from the outskirts of our region—it threatens the health of the Bay.

We need to invest in our transportation infrastructure to protect the Bay and improve quality of life in our region. But Proposition 6 will do the opposite by eliminating more than $700 million in statewide investments in public transit, road and bridge repairs, and initiatives to increase bicycle and pedestrian mobility. Read More

As San Jose grows and becomes more expensive, too many hardworking families are being forced out of the city they love. San Jose needs housing to reduce the hours and hours of time workers spend commuting. Affordable housing can reduce commute times and help decrease emissions that lead to pollution and contribute to climate change.

Measure V authorizes $450 million of general obligation bonds to acquire, construct and complete affordable housing in San Jose. Alleviating the critical shortage of affordable housing is essential to creating Bay Smart Communities that improve Bay Area sustainability. Measure V will produce and preserve housing with access to transit so more low-income and middle-income residents aren’t displaced, and can live close to work without long drives that emit pollution and greenhouse gasses that worsen climate change. Read More