2007 - the Sierra Club Bay Chapter is everywhere!
Building healthy cities, protecting the wild places of the Bay Area

It's hard to pick one leading accomplishment for 2007 - the Sierra Club Bay Chapter seems to be active everywhere. In each of our four counties, along the shore and in the hills, in the greenbelt and in the cities, bringing green energy and planning land use and protecting endangered species - the Bay Chapter has become a key influence.

Wherever you live within Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, or Marin Counties, the Sierra Club Bay Chapter is active, and one of our major efforts is making a difference in your home town or very nearby. In 2007 our efforts were happening `everywhere' - and making a difference.

Energy and global warming

One of our highest-profile efforts has been to address energy and global warming. Our aim is not just to do our local share in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases but to make the Bay Area a model for the nation. In 2007 finally the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved Community Choice, a new form of local control of electricity use that can lead to greatly increased use of renewable energy sources. The city will get 50% of its electricity from renewable sources, many of them new: the solar component alone will comprise 10,000 rooftops in the city, the world's largest distributed solar network. Now we are working with Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville, and with Marin County to create similar Community Choice programs.

Our Energy Committee's efforts to bring down the permit fees charged for installation of home solar systems continued to bear fruit during 2007. During the year, 10 jurisdictions in the Bay Chapter lowered their fees by over $100. Highlights were El Cerrito and Richmond, which brought their fees down to zero - from $840 and $735 respectively! Belvedere and San Ramon were the only cities to make significant increases.

We are working actively to get Berkeley to implement its Measure G declaration for an 80% reduction in greenhouse emissions. In 2007 we also helped get a solar-energy system installed at Berkeley's Washington School.

We also joined with efforts to publicize greener energy such as the national Step It Up days and the San Francisco Climate Challenge, and we supported the Sierra Club's Great Coastal Places participation in the successful campaign to prevent a liquefied-natural-gas facility from being built offshore of Malibu.

In 2008 renewable energy and global warming will continue among the Chapter's top priorities.

San Francisco

Our other biggest effort in San Francisco has concerned the planning for the rehabilitation of the city's Hetch Hetchy water system. Our biggest victory (working with a broad coalition of environmental organizations) was the city's decision not to build a third bore to its water-supply pipeline. A new tube would have allowed the city to greatly increase its pumping of water from the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. We will continue to oppose any increase in withdrawal of water from the Tuolumne and to work for conservation as the best approach for meeting new water needs. In addition, largely due to the insistence of the environmental community including the Sierra Club, the city's Public Utilities Commission has established a Watershed Environmental Improvement Program, thus moving towards protection and restoration of biological resources along the Tuolumne River and in the city's Alameda County and Peninsula watersheds.

We continued our efforts on the city's transportation issues. After years of efforts we joined with the city's whole environmental community in celebrating Healthy Saturdays, the opening of significant portions of the roadways in Golden Gate Park for pedestrians and bicyclists on Saturdays. We kept working to get the city to focus on improving its transit system and on limiting parking. The passage of Prop A and defeat of Prop H in the November election were great steps in this direction. We were successful in three of our five ballot-measure endorsements in the city.

In 2007 we supported the city in several steps it took towards reducing waste. In June the city's new ordinance on food-service ware cut down on non-recyclable containers and implements from restaurants and other food vendors. That month the mayor announced that the city would no longer be buying water in plastic bottles. In November the new shopping-bag ordinance took effect, requiring supermarkets to stop giving out non-recyclable plastic shopping bags.

The San Francisco Group, working in concert with the environmental community, brought about significant improvements to the language of Measure A, a park bond to appear on next February's ballot. As a result, the measure will include funds for the city's natural areas and for nature restoration in waterfront parks to be created by the Port of San Francisco.

The Chapter has long worked to reduce the clutter of non-historic buildings in the Presidio National Park, and we are pleased with the decision by the Presidio Trust to tear down the wings added in 1952 to the Public Health Service Hospital, which is being converted to apartments.

Marin County

The main focus of the Club's Marin Group in 2007 was the revision of the Countywide Plan. The new plan approved in November incorporates great new environmental protections: the addition of a Baylands Corridor to protect areas along San Pablo Bay and designation of the lowest-density alternative for the St. Vincent/Silveira property in east San Rafael.

In 2007 we have continued defending Marin's coast. We have been working actively to protect Bolinas Lagoon, Drakes Estero, and the Tomales Dunes, and these efforts will be continuing.

We endorsed environmental candidates in various local races in Marin, and eight of our nine endorsees won, one of them by just 50 votes. Our electoral efforts do make a difference.

Contra Costa County

The conversion of the Concord Naval Weapons Station to civilian use offers a large-scale opportunity for open space, smart growth, good jobs, and affordable housing. As part of the Community Coalition we successfully lobbied the Citizens Advisory Committee and City Council to consider re-use alternatives that would allocate 80% of the land for open space, parks, and recreation, and would place denser development near the BART station and new public-transit hubs.

Richmond is engaged in revising its General Plan. We are working to gain the strongest possible protections for the shoreline. No final decisions have been made, but due to our active organizing for the shoreline, it is clear that City Council members are paying close attention to the public demand for preservation. In Richmond we have also played a role in persuading Chevron to consider giving access to its land for a link of the Bay Trail to Point Molate.

Chapter volunteers have played a key role in drafting and circulating the Moraga Open Space Ordinance 2008 Initiative, which will give effective, long-term protection to the town's remaining open spaces. Thanks to enthusiastic volunteers, key help from Sierra Club staff, and very receptive Moraga residents, signature-gathering for this measure was a huge success with over 1,700 signatures obtained in less than four weeks! The initiative is expected to appear on the June ballot.

In Pittsburg we have organized a campaign to create a new civic culture of protection for the city's hills. The City Council was about to pass an ordinance that would give developers free rein throughout the hills, but due to our organizing efforts, turning out dozens of residents to what otherwise would have been sleepy Planning Commission and City Council meetings, the city has spent over a year considering and revising the ordinance. We fear that the Council may still pass essentially the same worthless ordinance, but there is now a movement in the community that will fight back and in the long run win protection for the hillsides that give the community its character.

The Chapter has been involved for years in the negotiations leading to the approval in 2007 of the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservation Plan. This plan creates regulations and a broad consensus for the protection of endangered species and their habitats in a broad swath of the county.

In 2007 we continued our ongoing efforts to protect and enhance the region's parks. Our East Bay Public Lands Committee played an important role in persuading the East Bay Regional Park District to continue barring mountain bikers from the steep and narrow Pine Tree Trail in Briones Park.

Alameda County

The Chapter is continually working with the cities of Alameda County to advance smart planning ideas that make the cities healthier to live in and concentrate growth in already developed areas rather than in the greenbelt.

Three Sierra Club leaders, Wendy Alfsen, Helen Burke, and Juliet Lamont, have been serving on Berkeley's Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) and have been influential in shaping the draft plan towards the Club's environmental principles. The Sierra Club supports the DAPAC plan as it goes to the City Council and Planning Commission. Important components of the draft include support for creation of a pedestrianized Center Street between Oxford and Shattuck that includes an open-space plaza and bringing Strawberry Creek into the design; bus rapid transit and promotion of mass transit in general; walking incentives; requirements for green/sustainable design such as solar access, green streets, and open space; promotion of alternative means of transportation; a mix of housing, including affordable units; minimizing impact on nearby neighborhoods; and appropriate density near existing infrastructure through permitting additional buildings of greater height beyond the current level of 5 - 7 stories.

Also in Berkeley's downtown area we were part of a successful effort to prevent gathering of signatures for a referendum that would likely have prevented construction of the David Brower Center, an extremely green building to house non-profit organizations, and Oxford Plaza, an affordable-housing project.

The Sierra Club has been working over many years for the completion of the Eastshore State Park. An important step will be the future use of the land now occupied by the Golden Gate Fields race track in Albany. Since Magna Entertainment, the owner of the track, is losing money badly, it is not unlikely that the track will close in the relatively near future. It was an important advance, therefore, that in 2007 the Albany City Council approved a visioning process for the future of the waterfront, to be prepared when the race track may close. In particular, this makes it less likely that this land will ever be turned into a mega-mall.

In Oakland the Chapter supported a lawsuit that led to a judge invalidating the approval of the massive Oak to Ninth project. We look forward to changes in the proposal, to allow Oakland to achieve a great waterfront park as set forth in the city's Estuary Policy Plan.

We have also continued our defense of the county's open spaces. In February a federal jury upheld the county's urban-growth boundary (UGB), enacted in 2000 through a ballot measure that the Club drafted and circulated. In November's elections we also elected two staunch UGB defenders to the Livermore City Council to ensure that Livermore doesn't allow any breaches of the limit.

And beyond

The Bay Chapter, in addition to its work on local issues, supports other Sierra Club efforts elsewhere and at all geographic scales.

We provided important funding for a lawsuit that has voided Solano County's approval of expansion of the Potrero Hills Landfill. This not only protects Suisun Marsh, the largest brackish marsh on the West Coast, but it keeps this operation from undercutting more environmentally sound landfills throughout the Bay Area.

At the state level we provide major budgetary support for Sierra Club California, which operates our Sacramento office; see the article on our successes there on page 9. Another brand-new statewide success is the collapse of an initiative campaign that would have repealed the state's moratorium on nuclear power).

Donald Forman