URGENT -- Park Poised to Reject Pond Restoration Project

TO EMAIL SUPERVISOR TISSIER, SEE BELOW

Dear Friends and Supporters,
Thank you for the emails you have sent to Supervisor Tissier.  We have been in communication with her office, and it seems that the project is now getting a serious look.  However, the Water Board, the plaintiff in the Clean Water Act suit, from which the $100,000 project money comes, has decided that if San Mateo County cannot give preliminary approval by April 29th, they will find another project for the money.

Last winter San Bruno Mountain Watch was chosen restore one of the shallow ponds in the Bog Area of San Bruno Mountain, as part of a Clean Water Act settlement. (The City of San Bruno violated the CWA, and they need to fund a project as part of their settlement.)  This project would improve the water quality flowing into SF Bay, and provide habitat for more species, including wetland plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles and birds. In our long-term vision, this pond would be one of several on the mountain that would support the threatened red-legged frog and the endangered San Francisco Garter Snake.

The San Mateo County Department of Parks originally said agreed in concept in November, 2010, then said “no” in February, and finally, in March, gave SBMW a list of 11 approvals that would be needed, in addition to the permits that would be required once the park gives approval (i.e., San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, US Army Corps of Engineers, California Department of Fish & Game, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). At this date, the time for securing this project funding is very short. If you would like more background on this issue, links to the relevant documents are below.

Your letters are still needed.  Please write to Supervisor Tissier, thanking her for her interest in this project, and urging her to speed up the process so that this project money will end up enhancing San Bruno Mountain.  An email form is included below, along with sample text.

Educators and students -- your letters may be especially helpful, as this project would include educational opportunities.

The pond enhancement project would improve the mountain’s biodiversity, provide educational opportunities for schools, and increase community involvement through the volunteer effort needed to do the project.  This project is fully in line with the San Bruno Mountain County Park Master Plan, which calls for the stewardship of natural resources and biodiversity.

Here are links to the supporting documentation from San Mateo County and San Bruno Mountain Watch:

Supplemental Environmental Project Description

List of County Requirements given to SBMW on March 2, 2011

Letter from Gary Lockman, Superintendent Department of Parks to SBMW

HCP In Relationship to Bog Enhancement Project

Park Master Plan In Relationship to the Proposed "San Bruno Mountain Bog Trail Freshwater Marsh Enhancement Project"

Letter from SBMW to Gary Lockman, Superintendent Department of Parks

SMBW has been trying to negotiate with the parks department about this for a couple months, and is now appealing to County Supervisor Adrienne Tissier (District 5) for help.  Please help us  by writing a brief email to Supervisor Tissier in support of this project.  The key points to stress are outlined below.

Thanks,

Ken McIntire, San Bruno Mountain Watch

Click here to send an email to County Supervisor Tissier -- -- urging her to advocate on behalf of the Pond Enhancement Project. Please copy us on it too -- sanbruno@mountainwatch.org.  Here are some key points:

•Thanks for the interest Supervisor Tissier has shown

•This Bog Pond Enhancement Project has many environmental, educational and social benefits.

 •The Department is undergoing budget cuts and has no money of its own to put towards fulfilling its primary purpose SBMt. County Park.

 •The Bog Pond Enhancement project would not cost the parks department extra money.

 •The primary role of the parks department on San Bruno Mountain is to protect and enhance the natural resources there.

•Why walk away from this project?  Natural resources (wetlands, endangered species habitat, biodiversity) should be enhanced whenever possible.

The Baylands EIR Scoping Meeting

On Tuesday evening, January 4th, local residents came to give input during the early stages of the official Environmental Impact Review (EIR) process for the Brisbane Baylands.  This "scoping" meeting was one opportunity for people to express what questions they want answered by the EIR. This means that the planning process, which usually ends with the developer getting legal permission to build something, is nearing its final stages.  It may take another couple of years or more, but when it’s done, there will be plan that is “bankable” for the developer, if the economy is right and builders want a piece of it. 

Through the Redevelopment Agency, money for the development's infrastructure will be raised by bonds that the city is ultimately responsible for.  If everything goes as planned, the Universal Paragon Corporation (UPC) will makes up its investment and make a lot of money while the city's coffers also grow. But should the developer go bankrupt, the city may end up holding the debt.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But the beginning of the whole process started with the garbage that lies under the Baylands. Memories of the unregulated Brisbane garbage dump are rightfully sore points in the minds of Brisbane citizens who were around in the 50’s and 60’s.  They don’t think the uncharacterized dump is safe to spend much time on, let alone live on. Brisbane resident Linda Salmon pointed out that any housing proposed on the Baylands would be in violation of the General Plan.  She recommended throwing the developer's plan out.

And residents don’t want to endure the years of pile driving it will take to underpin the 12.5 million square feet of buildings that are proposed, as Brisbane environmentalist Michele Salmon pointed out.  Such shaking would disturb all life in the area, not just humans.  Brisbane doesn't know much about the environmental impacts of such shock waves, but it should find this out through the EIR process.  With species and ecosystems collapsing at an alarming rate, ignorance of knowable impacts can't be tolerated.

Sustainability is an expressed goal of the Brisbane General Plan, and supposedly of the Baylands planning process.  But perhaps people are foolishly inventing fantasy when they claim that a large, intense development can really be ecologically sustainable.  That's is the view of many environmentalists in Brisbane, who view the Developer’s Sponsored Plan (DSP) as simply a means of making as much money as possible -- not a serious attempt at sustainability.  A serious attempt, environmentalist Dana Dillworth feels, would have started with the preservation of the living, breathing watershed, and developed a plan around that.

What angers many of the "elders" of the town is that over the 21 years that the Baylands has been on the city’s radar already, the public has had to work extremely hard (studying, public records requests, writing, speaking up, screaming and sometimes swearing) in order to get their ideas really taken in to account.  To bring some environmental reality into the decision making process has taken a lot of work against the powerful forces resisting it.

It is really Brisbane’s seasoned environmental veterans, who have led and continue to lead this fight for real sustainability. They are knowledgeable, plain spoken, and tired of being “nice”.  In their view, there is too much at stake, and they want Brisbane to be a positive example for others -- not fantasy sustainable development, but real sustainable development.

One truly more sustainable plan  and therefore a more real plan does exist -- the Renewable Energy Plan (REP). The REP’s primary goal is to produce more renewable energy than it uses.  It doesn’t allow housing, the total build-out is about 1/12th that of the DSP, and preserves more historic wetlands than the other plans.  It was developed by Citizens for Renewable Energy in the Bay Lands (CREBL) and led by Tony Attard and Anja Miller, a former Brisbane. The Renewable Energy Plan is classified as a CEQA alternative plan, which along with the No-project alternative, is used to compare with the more “real” plans -- the DSP, and a so-called Community Preferred Plan (CPP).  The CPP was developed partly through a series of community meetings and workshops as an attempt to make a consensus plan from all the community ideas and goals about the project.  Its buildout size of 8.5 million sq. ft., however, was not arrived at through a public process.

It appears that there have been subtle attempts to omit or understate the REP, though the Brisbane staff has been responsive to fixing the problem.  For example, when the scoping document first came out, the REP was not yet on the city’s website, though the others were.  Apparently, one result of this omission was that the Wikipedia article on the project mentioned only the two more “official” plans.  At the scoping hearing, the public was assured that the Renewable Energy Plan would get serious consideration, and could become the adopted plan if the council wanted it to.

CREBL, Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN), San Bruno Mountain Watch (SBMW) and the rest of the environmental warriors of Brisbane know this means they must attend a lot of meetings, read materials, speak out, and get others to speak out in order for the Brisbane Baylands have a truly sustainable outcome.



Development of the Brisbane Baylands

The Baylands EIR process is about to unfold.  The Brisbane Baylands is a "brown field" where San Francisco dumped its garbage for about 50 years, south of Candlestick Park, between Bayshore Blvd and Highway 101.  The owner, Universal Paragon Corporation (UPC), proposes more than 14.5 million square feet of building there, including 4500 dwelling units.

The present Brisbane General Plan requires that no housing be built on the Baylands, unless there is a vote of the citizens that allows it.   Brisbane, which bore the brunt of the garbage landfill when it was in action, doesn't think it is wise to have people living on an uncharacterized pre-modern dump.  People want the site made safe, with as much open space as possible.

UPC points out that they offer a way to raise the money for a clean-up -- lots of building, including housing, which is the most lucrative kind.

CREBL (Citizens for Renewable Energy on the Bay Lands) has offered a Renewable Energy Alternative, which will be studied in the EIR. (See http://www.brisbaneca.org/baylands/eir-alternatives for the CREBL Alternative.) It proposes that the Baylands be an energy positive site, generating more electrical power than it uses, through renewable sources like solar and wind power. The building footprint would be relatively small, and focused on renewable energy research and development, and some alternative energy related light manufacturing. The CREBL plan implies that cleanup for minimum development is less costly and possibly doable through public sources.

SBMW supports the CREBL alternative, which works to reduce greenhouse gasses, and preserves open space.  It is the plan, we feel, that is closest to being truly sustainable from an environmental perspective. It would also have the least impact on the rare habitats on and around the mountain, which are our primary concern. To contact CREBL, email bris.crebl@yahoo.com.

It should be noted that the High Speed Rail System is looking for a train yard, and has the right of Eminent Domain.  The Baylands is one of the potential sites for this yard.

Citizens were given a short time over the Christmas holidays to submit scoping comments for the EIR. They are due January 10th.  (Scoping comments are questions that people would like answered in the EIR, which is supposed to compare the three plans in terms of environmental factors.)  Citizens really need to weigh in.  It is unfortunate that the process has started with what appears to be a strategy to avoid some participation by having comments due when people are distracted by the holidays.

The Notice of Preparation for the EIR is available at here.  Comments should be submitted to John Swiecki, jswiecki@ci.brisbane.ca.us.

Advocacy Update: August 10, 2010

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I am visiting one of the hidden treasures on San Bruno Mountain, a small shell-mound, evidence of the Ohlone civilization that lived in the Bay Area for more than 5000 years.  A very stable, largely peaceful human presence -- for five thousand years.  It is humbling to think about the Ohlone, and to be here, listening to the birds in the canyon, seeing the oyster shells on the mound and the surrounding buckeye trees...its a good place to think.

Across the way, I see the Northeast Ridge, with two housing developments on either end of it, connected by a road -- Mission Blue Way -- with a bad erosion problems above it. Both developments and the road have had issues with poor construction, in less than twenty years.  

Seventy-one more houses have been approved by all the government entities involved -- local, county, and federal.  With their combined wisdom and the developer’s money, they decided that  71 more large houses on this hillside will bring no more long term harm to the endangered species.  In fact, the building will be a good thing, they say, by providing more money for habitat repairs.  No matter that the habitat repairs are necessary because of modern over-development in the first place: the fragmentation of natural ecosystems; massive infusions of invasive non-native plants; and air, water and ground pollution.  

A week ago, I received the news that the judge ruled against us in our lawsuit aimed at lessening the impacts of the new development.  I went up to the site of the future housing project yesterday for the first time, and visualized 71 more three-car garage homes at the site.   It was depressing. --- SBMW will soon decide whether or not to appeal this decision, or what other legal action, if any, would have a good chance of bringing some relief to what is left of the northeast ridge. 

Please know, though, that we feel even more urgency as a result of the ruling to preserve what will be left of San Bruno Mountain. It may be hard to imagine our civilization stabilizing and lasting for 5000 years, as the Ohlones’ did. But we can certainly imagine preserving this mountain and its native species as a portal into the natural world for many generations to come.  That is our firm intention.

Please continue joining us as we work to preserve our wild mountain.

Advocacy Update: 7/5/10

San Bruno Mountain Watch has opposed building on the mountain from the beginning.  Nothing is more permanently destructive to the mountain’s open space and biodiversity than roads, houses, landscaping and the accompanying human activities.

When the first Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) in the country was created for San Bruno Mountain in 1983, we opposed that too.  HCPs allow development on endangered species habitat by utilizing a loophole in the Endangered Species Act which allows the killing of endangered species.  (For more information on HCPs, see our website, www.mountainwatch.org).  HCPs started on San Bruno Mountain and now number more than 1200 nationwide. They are rigged procedures that favor development while paying lip-service to conservation and endangered species protection.   

Over the past few years we have waged an almost continual battle against Brookfield Homes’ Landmark at the Ridge project, on the Northeast Ridge of the mountain, which contains valuable Mission Blue and Callippe Silverspot butterfly (both endangered species) habitat.  With the help of many of you who wrote letters, attended public meetings and supported our efforts financially, we delivered the message loud and clear that “NO MORE!” development should take place there.

However, both the San Mateo County Supervisors and the Brisbane City Council voted to approve this destructive project, leaving San Bruno Mountain Watch with one final option --  a legal challenge, which we made. The case is now awaiting a Superior Court judge’s decision, which should come by August 5th.  Because of the San Bruno Mountain HCP’s long history and the layers of laws and agencies involved, this has been a very involved and time-consuming case. 

Because such habitat destruction is such an important issue for us, we have also been reviewing our legal options on the federal level (our present lawsuit is based on state law).  The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has been generous enough to help us with this ongoing review. If another lawsuit make sense, we would like to pursue it since legal challenges are perhaps the most effective means of protecting our remaining natural resources and endangered species, as our past legal track record has shown. Natural ecosystems are diminishing at an alarming and unsustainable rate and it is important to expose HCPs as rigged games that they are.   

Our legal work is quite expensive, taking a lot of staff time as well as financial resources. We have been lucky enough to get a couple of grants along with the pro-bono services of the CBD, but this support only begins to cover the cost.  A lot of support needed to carry this program forward.