potrero view

November 2009

Publisher's View: Toxic Development

By Steven J. Moss

In the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries communities clustered around waterways and rail lines. Oceans, rivers, and train stations served as essential trade arteries; the non-virtual commodity-carrying internet of the day.  While the Gold Rush sparked San Francisco’s rise as an Imperial City, it was the bay that enabled it to become Northern California’s financial and social capitol.

Today, high land values and smart growth policies have reordered development nodes towards light rail and freeways.  As indicated in the Association of Bay Area Governments map, over the next two decades market forces and public policies will drive housing and jobs to collect alongside our post-industrial age transportation corridors.  In Southeast San Francisco, high-density growth is being directed to areas near the highway 101 and 280 spurs, Caltrain stations, and Muni’s Third Street line.  When economic growth rebounds from the Great Recession, Dogpatch, Bayview-Hunters Point, and Showplace Square’s population could more than double.  This development pattern, if fully realized, will create a number of benefits, including diminishing the amount of time we spend in our cars, thereby reducing polluting air and greenhouse gas emissions; reinforcing employment activity; and enabling the creation of sustainable and attractive shopping and entertainment districts.

However, danger lurks behind growth policies that may be smart, but aren’t thoughtful.  As demonstrated by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, areas around transportation corridors – freeways and truck routes – can pose high health hazards.  Fuel combustion –particularly diesel– as well as decomposing roads, tires, engines, and brakes creates a complex stew of gases, vapors, and particulates that can be poisonous if absorbed at the wrong levels.  In the case of Bayview-Hunters Point and Dogpatch, poor air quality is made worse by toxic contamination in the ground and water at Pier 70, the Hunters Point Shipyard, and other former industrial sites.  We are herding dense development directly into the path of a lingering legacy of environmental hazards.

In 2004, California prohibited construction of new schools within 500 feet of a highway.  As reported in the March 2009 View (“San Francisco Attempts to Reduce Pollution at New Residential Developments”), San Francisco took another step forward last year, when it became the nation’s first city to require developers to evaluate new residential projects of 10 units or more for their proximity to traffic and associated risk of indoor particulate matter.  If indoor air quality is expected to be poor, developers must install ventilation systems that reduce pollutants by 80 percent.  And the Air District will soon issue rules that will make it more difficult to site new emission sources in Southeast San Francisco and other communities already over-burdened with pollution.

These public policies, while representing progress, come too late for current Southeast San Francisco residents and workers, who have been subjected to substandard air quality and other health stressors for as long as they’ve been in the neighborhood.  And they will do almost nothing to help old-timers or anyone who purchases an existing property in the future:  new apartments with state-of-the-art indoor air filtration systems will huddle close by old Victorians and 20th century apartment buildings whose main air quality control is oft-leaky windows and curtains.  While new residents may be safe inside their high-tech high-rises, they have to breathe the same outdoor air as everyone else when they walk their dog, take a jog, or shop in the neighborhood.   

To reduce vehicle-related air quality hazards cars and trucks could be redesigned, including paying careful attention not only to fuels, but the materials used for brakes, engines, tires, and even road surfaces.  Such a fundamental transformation, if it’s to be made, is in the distant future, and will be driven by national and international politics.  More immediately, we need to make it as easy and fun to take public transport as it is to drive.  That means lifting up our transportation system to an entirely different level, including creating a far more attractive web of rail, buses, boats, and shared taxis, cars, and bicycles, all of which need to be designed to meet state-of-the-art environmental standards.  Until most of us affirmatively look forward to getting on the T-Line, or know that within a few blocks of our home or business we can easily find compelling transport that will take us where we want to go, our love affair with our cars will continue unabated.

To further reduce vehicles’ pernicious impacts, people need to be shielded from pollution through artful landscaping.  Similar to the back to the future use of marshes and swales to filter storm water run-off, well-selected and cleverly placed vegetation around roadways can help soak up otherwise poisonous particles.  Inclusion of open space buffers would serve the dual purpose of environmental remediation and recreation.

The shift from waterways and rail to freeways occurred simultaneously with a trend towards increased privatization and a diminishment of the public space:  away from street cars and public parks to private vehicles and suburban yards.  We now need to turn our attention back to our civic garden.  Funds from city-specific vehicle licensing fees, among other sources, should be dedicated to improving Southeast San Francisco’s transportation system.  Public-private partnerships with bus and boat companies should be created, including asking Google and University of California, San Francisco commuters, among others, to share their rides with the rest of us.  

More than any other community, San Francisco’s future will be created in the Southeast neighborhoods.  Let’s bury the industrial skeletons of the past, and bring to life the kind of places in which our children will thrive.       


   

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