By John King
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Imagine a
world where environmental issues aren't on the map. Every piece of land and
every shallow bit of water is judged on the basis of whether or not it can be
developed.
Welcome
to the Bay Area of 1959, where the biggest difference between then and now
doesn't involve computers or cell phones, but the way we view the natural
region around us.
Thank
goodness.
My sigh
of relief comes after peering deep into a 46-year-old crystal ball of sorts: a
report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers titled "Future Development of the
San Francisco Bay Area 1960-2020." With scientific care and no emotion at all
-- just the projections, ma'am -- it charts, on a decade- by-decade basis, the
form that growth back then was expected to take.
Viewed in
hindsight, the picture is bleak: The 2010 map, for instance, accepts as a
given that Napa Valley is filled with homes while thick bands of development
connect such Marin County "hubs" as Nicasio and Lagunitas, Olema and Point
Reyes Station.
"The
extension of land use down the Peninsula, in the coast area, and in the Bay
side of
And how
will everyone get around? On freeways, of course, such as a Highway 24
extension looping east from
Indeed,
bay fill is the subject of 19 pages in the 94-page report as well as three of
the foldout maps that are tucked into the report's slipcase. Not that filling
in the bay is described as "filling in the bay." Heaven forbid! The engineers
instead define marshes, tidelands and shallow mud as "areas susceptible of
reclamation."
Just as
any dry soil with a slope of less than 30 percent was judged to be a potential
development site, any marsh or shallow water was just a levee away from a
sandy new life.
"Flatland
in the neighborhood of large urban agglomerations is generally in demand for a
variety of purposes," notes the report. Ergo, "it appears likely that, by
about 1990, little unreclaimed marshland will remain in the Bay Area."
In all,
the report anticipates 18 square miles of new fill for industrial and public
purposes. And though it's costly to turn tidal areas into dry ground, "as
population growth continues in the Bay Area, other spots probably will show up
where it will become economically feasible to reclaim tide and submerged lands
exclusively for residential purposes."
The
report mentions the then-current example of California Point in Tiburon, where
"the fill material for this project came from a hill nearby. ... The company
gained not only the reclaimed land but also the site of the former hill for
the construction of houses."
I quote
at length because the matter-of-fact tone of the report captures the accepted
wisdom of the time. Nature exists to be flattened and filled. There's no
official recognition of the idea that maybe, just maybe, there's value in
leaving things the way they are.
Funny
thing is, one reason attitudes changed was the release of this report.
The Army
Corps detailed how 243 square miles of bay had been "reclaimed" since 1850,
when
What's
left to the fishes looks like a deflated balloon.
Goodbye,
When the
Oakland Tribune ran a version of the Army Corps' map, it caught the eye of
people already concerned by what was happening around them, including
In 1965,
the state Legislature imposed a moratorium on bay fill; four years later, the
Bay Conservation and Development Commission became the official guardian of
the bay and its shores. Since then, the clock has turned back: 14 square miles
have been restored to the bay, such as with the conversion of
Instead
of gathering dust on a shelf, the engineers' study had an afterlife -- though
not in the way its creators intended.
"The
bulldozers were roaring away everyplace back then, and it was assumed nothing
would stop them," recalls Harold Gilliam, a former Chronicle environmental
reporter whose irreplaceable books include 1969's "Between the Devil and the
Deep Blue Bay." "It was the map that got everyone all excited."
In
today's climate of easy cynicism, you can argue that Bay Area politicians and
activists now pay more attention to the environment than to the needs of
people who live and work here. If the
And gee,
would another bridge or two across the bay really be so bad? Or why not a
freeway from
But when
I look at the Army Corps' inexorable maps, line after line connecting dot
after dot, the contours and quirks of today's Bay Area disappear. It's a
landscape of subjugation, the grinding monotony that typifies the
one-size-fits-sprawl approach of so many other metropolitan regions.
The
pendulum indeed has swung since 1959. People guard the status quo too
zealously, ignoring how we need to make room for more people in urbanized
areas. People who grow up here should be able to live here.
Not every
piece of vacant land is sacred.
But if
the Bay Area today is guilty of swinging to a protective extreme, this is
still a better approach than treating open land and water as fair game.
Because once it's covered over, it is gone for good.
Place appears on Thursdays. E-mail
John King, who thanks Dick Ward of
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/28/DDG41DU0T31.DTL