Natural History of San Francisco Bay by Ariel Rubissow Okamoto & Kathleen M. Wong

Author:Ariel Rubissow Okamoto & Kathleen M. Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

Booms deployed during fuel transfers in Puget Sound, Washington, to help prevent any spilled oil from contaminating the ecosystem. (Washington State Department of Ecology)

Most critical for the bay in the future is whether clean-up crews can speed up their response time. Says Chabot, “What you do in the first two hours after a spill is more important than what you do in the next two weeks. If you can’t contain the oil in San Francisco’s tides and currents, you’ve lost the war and are suddenly faced with having to use thousands of volunteers to clean up the coast.”

Though in-the-water spills continue to defy the logistical skills of state planners, management of polluted runoff across the land has progressed in the last two decades. Unfortunately, runoff from farm fields, city streets, and other contaminated surfaces into the bay doesn’t come conveniently out of the end of a pipe, where it can be captured and cleaned up before discharge.

Tackling such diffuse sources of contamination has required both federal and local actions. In 1987, the nation’s leaders passed an amendment to the Clean Water Act requiring local municipalities to come up with storm-water management plans. Suddenly cities and counties everywhere were scrambling for ways to stem the flow of pesticides, gasoline, fertilizers, flame retardants, and other chemicals off the landscape and into waterways and estuaries.

“What people forget is that the bay is at the bottom of all of it; it’s the terminus of all the activity going on in the Sacramento–San Joaquin watershed,” says Hoenicke. “All these interconnected waterways and landscapes drain into the bay.”

Most of the runoff management momentum came from cities. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the volume of runoff pollutants had risen at an alarming rate due to new home construction, urban expansion, and the paving of more roads and driveways. Curbing these inputs is a matter of public education more than anything else. Most Bay Area residents have since seen or heard a message via billboard or radio urging them to use biodegradable products to wash cars or spray weeds, or to take old paints and motor oil to collection sites rather than pouring them down a nearby storm drain.

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