The Bay Area shoreline -

Bay and ocean, city and wildlands, threats and dreams

San Francisco began as a seaport, and each day hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents pass by or cross the Bay, yet today the lives of most of us have little to do with the water. It is easy to forget how much shoreline we have in our four little Bay Chapter counties.

And our shoreline is so varied. Most of our Pacific edge, both sandy beaches and rocky cliffs, is parkland open to the public. But these public lands range from a thin strip of beach west of San Francisco's Great Highway, with the city's bustle ever-present, to the wild shorelines of Point Reyes, buttressed with thousands of acres of wild lands and even a true wilderness area.

Much of the Bay shoreline too is protected in parks and refuges, but these range from broad swaths of wetland that have been restored into fairly well-functioning ecosystems to narrow pathways wedged between the water and the freeway, with towering buildings just across the way. Much of San Francisco's very urban waterfront is lined with piers, some managed as public amenities, some commercial, some abandoned. The Port of Oakland runs a thriving seaport and airport, but little of its shoreline is open to the public. The Contra Costa shoreline holds vast stretches of apparently natural wetlands and the accompanying uplands so critical to shoreline ecosystems, but much of this area is abandoned industrial land, with varying degrees of toxic contamination, human alteration, and development plans.

The goal of this Yodeler is to tell of this varied shoreline and its prospects. Some of the articles tell of urgent threats, others of compromises, and a few of hopeful dreams for the future.

Donald Forman