San Francisco and the Bay -- All Linked Together

(Editor’s Note: Charlotte Ely is a 2005 Udall Scholar. She was born and bred in San Francisco, and arranged the Udall Legacy tour stop there. She’s now on the bus.)

The Udallers rolled into San Francisco on a foggy Friday evening, about forty-five minutes later than planned. I was already waiting for them at the Hotel Britton when I got the call: The bus was caught in traffic. Big shocker, right? Driving into downtown San Francisco is risky, especially on a Friday night, especially on the last Friday of the month. For the uninitiated, the last Friday of the month in cities all over the world is Critical Mass, the infamous, amoebic congregation of bicyclists who take over City streets, riding by the dozens—and sometimes even thousands—through thoroughfares and boulevards dominated by vehicles every other day of the month. On Friday July 29th 2007, the Udall bus was held up by at least several hundred bicyclists. It was a fitting greeting for a group of scholars traveling around the country promoting sustainable transportation alternatives. If I could have arranged for 13 bicycles to be donated, all of us Udallers would have been part of that mass: it is, after all, a great way to see the City, and I wanted to give the scholars the greatest introduction to San Francisco I could muster.

Instead, we drank beer, ate pizza, and ‘talked trash’ at Anchor Steam, a San Francisco brewery that diverts about 99.5% of its waste from the landfill. As scholars learned the following day at the San Francisco Department of the Environment, San Francisco has successfully implemented what’s called the Fantastic Three, a three bin waste management system that allows City residents to place all organics (anything that came from something that was once alive: meat, dairy, fruits, veggies, soiled paper, etc.) into a GREEN bin, recyclables into a BLUE bin, and all remaining landfill bound discards into a BLACK bin. This program has enabled the City by the Bay to divert about 69% of our waste as of 2006. We’re working to reach 75% diversion by 2010, and Zero Waste by 2020. Anchor Steam has reached an impressive 99.5% diversion by creative means: spent hops are sold to a local cattle rancher, who mixes the rich protein source into feed.

I’m not sure what percent of my waste I divert from the landfill each year. Normally, I empty my compost pale about once a week, my recycling bin about every other two weeks, and my garbage bin once every four months. Most of what I ‘throw away’ is compostable and—with all our restaurants and day-time dwellers— this is true for the City too: 35% of San Francisco’s waste stream is organic. This fact has the City focusing much of its waste diversion efforts on the GREEN bin. The problem is that the compost facility we send our organics to is overwhelmed. There’s simply not enough space, and expanding an existing composting facility or, worse yet, building an additional facility requires a lofty and arduous permit. This has San Francisco and other cities with similar waste management programs looking at alternatives.

Enter, Stage Right, East Bay Municipal Utilities District, or EBMUD.

EBMUD is a seemingly ordinary wastewater treatment facility: it treats, it flares, it stinks. What makes it unique is that EBMUD has been digesting ‘biosolids’ (a professional term for poop) with organics, yielding much more methane than digesting just biosolids would. Currently, EBMUD is producing about 4.5 MW with this technique, which is enough to power about 4,500 homes. In other words, this wastewater treatment facility is not just managing waste, but generating energy too! Jack Macy, the organics coordinator for the San Francisco Department of the Environment, believes that this could be the future of organics management. Those scholars that weren’t gagging from the stench were impressed. Bret Strogen, in particular, looked as happy as a pig in ____ at EBMUD, where he sported a t-shirt explaining the typical layout of a wastewater treatment facility.

The day ended with a bio-diesel ferry tour of the bay. While I am typically repulsed by the idea of having to go to Fisherman’s Warf (which is a bit like Disney land in the summer, but more crowded and reeking of unsustainably caught seafood), the Red and White Fleet ferry was great. Not only did they kindly donate a ferry ride for our crew, but they also run their ferries on a biodiesel blend just like our bus (usually they use B20, but right now they're temporarily using B5 while testing out new engines.) The ferry went under the Golden Gate Bridge, which, even as an endemic San Franciscan, I had never done before. And, you know, it’s even more breathtaking from the water. Something about floating right where the Pacific greets the Bay…looking around, the other Udallers appeared similarly awed. Martina was especially struck as we passed Alcatraz, where from the boat, we could make out “All Indian’s Welcome” spray-painted in red on the first building hordes of tourists pass as they start walking up to that infamous prison. I was once told that one of the motivations behind securing Alcatraz was ensuring that, when people entered the notoriously beautiful Golden Gate, the first thing they would see was not a prison, but Indian Country, right smack dab in the middle of a glittering blue bay. And the bay was glittering; it was a perfect day for a ferry ride. After rounding Alcatraz, we turned back toward the City. In the distance, we could see Crissy Field, the poster-child of rehabilitated wetlands that lies at the foot of the Presidio National Park, where, the following morning, scholars tore out invasive weeds and put up protective fencing around a sensitive dune community.

If Saturday’s schedule was tight, Sunday’s was wearing a corset taut enough to damage internal organs. After restoring habitat with the National Park Service, we attended a slideshow presentation by Gregg Garr, a San Franciscan to the extreme who has got an amazing collection of old photographs and an unparalled passion for restoring native habitat. His message rang loud and clear: Cars suck and planting natives everywhere is crucial. Perhaps the most shocking part of Greg’s presentation is the point at which he shows one location at two different times: What was once John Mclarren’s nursery, the very one where San Francisco’s premier gardener tended Golden Gate Park’s first plants, is now a parking lot. His slides and his accompanying comments are, however, as inspiring as they are despairing. He concludes with some of the many examples of San Francisco’s habitat rehabilitation successes, including Heron’s Head park, a former dumping ground turned near bird sanctuary in BayView/Hunters Point (BVHP), the neighborhood where the Environmental Justice roundtable was held.

When the slideshow ended, we jumped on the bus and hightailed it for BVHP, where we met with representatives from Green Action, Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, Literacy for Environmental Justice, San Francisco Department of the Environment, CalEPA, and EPA Region 9. What was supposed to be small group discussions about Sustainability and Environmental Justice transformed into an open forum about the history of Environmental Injustice in BVHP, current outrages (including a detailed discussion about the allegedly inept precautions Lennar—a development firm involved with many of the redevelopment projects throughout the City—has taken to protect the surrounding community from the asbestos released into the air when serpentine rock is drilled into) and the role of the above mentioned groups in working toward Environmental Justice in the neighborhood. The conversation got heated a number of times. I know it was frustrating for me to sit there and listen to all these brilliant, good people all working, ultimately, toward the same goal, and yet…so many children in BVHP have asthma, and breast cancer rates are abnormally high; and each victory—like the final shutdown of the antiquated PG&E powerplant—seems to be shadowed by defeat—like the disenfranchisement of the community throughout the Hunters Point Shipyard clean-up and redevelopment process. It’s heart breaking. If any of the scholars left their heart in San Francisco, it would have been in the basement of the Bay View YMCA. The most memorable moment for me was when Marie Harrison, a long time community advocate and the Green Action representative, stood up and thanked us all for coming and then sincerely expressed something to this effect: ‘knowing about the problems the people in my community face makes you morally accountable; this knowledge gives you responsibility.’ I hope all of us live up to her expectation, and that I do especially.

Marie Harrison of Green Action speaking at the EJ Roundtable Discussion in Bay View Hunters Point

After the roundtable, we went to the dinner catered by Back to Earth at the gorgeous Women’s Building in the mission district. The Big Green Bus showed up, as did some local Udall scholars, and other folks involved with environmental and sustainability work from several different organizations throughout the City. We munched and mingled, savoring the great company and food that my stomach is now growling about as I write this, driving through some lightless stretch of highway near the California-Arizona border.

By: Charlotte Ely