San Francisco Supervisors must stop Hunters Point disaster

San Francisco's current plan for Candlestick Point and Hunters Point would be an environmental disaster:

• a state park would be irreparably damaged;
• a 34-acre wetland-restoration project would be undermined, along with its attempt to restore threatened bird species;
• the Bayview community would continue to face the on-going threat of pollution from the U.S. Navy dump at Hunters Point.

If the San Francisco Board of Supervisors wants to go ahead with this project, it needs to honestly acknowledge these harms. But further, we believe that a Board equipped with a complete and honest analysis of this damage would reject the project outright.

That's why the California Environmental Quality Act requires the city to approve an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) - a full and fair evaluation of the project's impacts - before going ahead, and that's why the Board must reject the current EIR - a document that flouts both the legal and the ethical requirements.

Nonsense in the EIR

The project proposes to put a six-lane road and bridge through Candlestick Point State Park, carrying buses that produce a 75-decibel noise level, equivalent to being only 50 feet away from a freeway. The EIR claims there would be no aesthetic impact on visitors hoping to have a quiet nature experience in the state park - on the grounds that it is not possible to have an undisturbed nature experience in an urban area! (Evidently the authors have never visited Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, or any of our many nature areas in San Francisco).

The project would put a huge 900-foot long, 81-foot wide bridge with 32 pilings across South Basin (the body of water between Hunters Point and Candlestick Point). This bridge would impact mudflats and wetlands. The federal government calls these "special aquatic sites", recognizing that mudflats provide a home to more biota (clams, worms, and other invertebrates) per square foot than any other habitat, all of which provide food for fish and birds. Mudflats play a key role in the aquatic food chain. Shading mudflats reduces their ability to sustain life; pilings destroy mudflats. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission considers pile-supported structures in the Bay (e.g. piers and bridges) to be fill because of such impacts. Yet the EIR claims little or no impact from the bridge.

The EIR implausibly claims that an alternate upland route around Yosemite Slough, only six-tenths of a mile longer than the bridge route, would take a bus five more minutes of travel time and thus is not a practical alternative. It's simply not credible to say it would take five minutes to go basically half a mile, especially as much of this alternate route would be on a dedicated right-of-way from an abandoned railroad line, and buses on this route can have transit-signal priority enabling them to pass through intersections without stopping.

The EIR is required to look at project impacts on the waterbird nesting islands that are to be built as part of a Candlestick State Park wetland restoration project. This project has all its required permits and is ready to go into construction later this year. The islands are designed, in particular, to provide nesting habitat for the threatened western snowy plover. The EIR could not deny that the bridge 100 - 150 feet from the nesting islands and separating them from the Bay would probably have impacts on birds using the islands. Instead it makes the far-fetched assertion that the islands would not attract birds such as the snowy plover - and so skips any analysis of impacts and/or possible mitigations (there evidently aren't any, other than using the alternate upland route).

The San Francisco Planning Commission recently approved this flawed EIR, even as it admitted that the project as constituted has unavoidable significant impacts that are not mitigable.

• The project would result in increased air pollution, exceeding Bay Area Air Quality Management District standards for health limits, but the Commission puts the blame on regional problems and so presents no solutions. (It could demand that the developer help fund regional air-quality improvements). This means increased air pollution to a community, the Bayview, that already has the worst air in the city and the highest cancer and asthma rates,
• The project would cause increased demand for transit. Eight bus lines would see significant increases in travel time per bus of up to 17 minutes for one line (the 29), and 3 - 8 minutes for the others. The EIR states that more buses would be needed and that the developer would probably pay for some but not all of the costs. In particular, the developer would not pay for drivers for the new buses or for their maintenance. In a city that has just implemented severe service cuts, this does not bode well for the future of transit in this "Transit First" city.

All in all, it's a pretty shabby EIR filled with unsupported statements (you can't have an undisturbed nature experience in an urban area), misrepresentations (a bus on a dedicated right-of-way, without passenger stops, and with transit-signal priority will not travel faster than a local bus facing traffic lights, traffic, and passenger stops), and procedural errors (failing to examine an alternative route around Yosemite Slough entirely on a dedicated right-of-way and thus with no competing traffic at all).

WhatYouCanDo

Contact your supervisor at:

City Hall, Room 2244
One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102.

Eric Mar (District 1)
(415)554-7410
Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7415;

Michela Alioto-Pier (District 2)
(415)554-7752
Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7843;

David Chiu (District 3)
(415)554-7450
David.Chiu@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7454;

Carmen Chu (District 4)
(415)554-7460
Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7432;

Ross Mirkarimi (District 5)
(415)554-7630
Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7634;

Chris Daly (District 6)
(415)554-7970
Chris.Daly@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7974;

Sean Elsbernd (District 7)
(415)554-6516
Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-6546;

Bevan Dufty (District 8)
(415)554-6968
Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-6909;

David Campos (District 9)
(415)554-5144
David.Campos@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-6255;

Sophie Maxwell (District 10)
(415)554-7670
Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-7674;

John Avalos (District 11)
(415)554-6975
John.Avalos@sfgov.org
fax: (415)554-6979.

Tell them to reject this flawed Hunters Point Final EIR.

If you have any questions, please call Arthur Feinstein at (415 680-0643.

Arthur Feinstein, conservation chair, Sierra Club San Francisco Group