If I’m the San Pablo Bay this week, I’m feeling like the only kid not asked to the high school prom.
You would, too, if you were a major body of water in the San Francisco Bay Area and out of all the nine counties which voted June 7 on whether to fund the restoration of Bay Area shorelines – and the four that couldn’t muster the enthusiasm were all surrounding you.
Adding insult to injury: The only reason San Pablo Bay’s wetlands will ultimate enjoy restoration is because the five other counties love their bay so gosh darn much.
Measure AA, or the San Francisco Bay Clean Water, Pollution Prevention and Habitat Restoration Program, passed by a couple of percentage points – it needed two-thirds approval and earned about 69 percent of the more than one million people who voted. The $500 million parcel tax – equal to about $12 a year per household over the course of 20 years – was the first-ever Bay Area-wide ballot measure. The revenue will go toward restoring the bay marshlands to their natural states following decades of development-crazy humans messing with them via dikes, levees, dredging – all those ill-advised mid-20th century engineering practices that placed bay-front views above the salt marsh harvest mouse on the regional list of priorities. The restorations will not only be geared toward the conservation of the shorelines and native plants and animals – but to increase their attraction as recreational respites for local residents.
The fact that the natural restoration is also a buffer against the sea-level rise we’re facing with global climate change is the somewhat unsettling icing on the cake.
Disappointingly, the further one got from the San Francisco Bay – aka the cool bay, the one with prisons and great white sharks and suspension bridges – the less likely they were to vote in favor of forking over $12 to save native species, with us potentially being one of them.
San Francisco, Alameda and Marin counties led the way, wading knee-deep into the marshland hoopla with 77 percent, 75 percent and 72 percent approval, respectively. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties followed, respectably, at 71 percent and 69 percent.
Luckily, the measure wasn’t simply the San Pablo Bay Restoration Program – because surrounding counties would have left those shores to fend for themselves.
Contra Costa checked in at 65 percent, Sonoma County at 63 percent, Napa at 57 percent and Solano at 53 percent. To be fair, the San Pablo Bay wasn’t the only body of water surrounded by unimpressed voters - the Carquinez Strait and Suisun Bay will also enjoy shoreline restoration thanks to our southerly neighbors.
Some Measure AA watchdogs expected Sonoma County’s support to be several percentage points higher – even suggesting the environmentally minded North Bay counties would need to carry some of the more populous urban centers in order for the initiative to stand a chance. So much for that.
Sonoma County has been cautious about tax proposals – though this is a very small one – for the last couple of election cycles, so perhaps a tax backlash can explain some of the middling support. But there’s also the argument that the San Pablo Bay isn’t fully appreciated in this county with such amazing Pacific Ocean coastline to admire in comparison. When we think of Sonoma County bayside shorelines, it’s typically a vision of Highway 37 traffic on the way to/from another more favored body of water: Lake Tahoe.
But Sonomans should give our end of the bay system a closer look. Check it out at the newly open-to-the-public trail at the east end of Reclamation Road south of Sears Point. The 2.5 miles of Bay Trail were created following last year’s breaching of the levee along the shoreline parallel to Highway 37 – an initial volley in the battle to restore the baylands.
On Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon, Sonoma Land Trust docents are out there talking with visitors about the restoration project, local ecology and holding walks every hour. The site itself is open from sunrise to sunset.
We protect some amazing endangered species along our shoreline – like the brown pelican, clapper rail and the aforementioned harvest mouse. It’s also a busy stopover for all sorts of birds on the Pacific Flyway, and has a storied history as a prime shipping link between San Francisco and gold country. China Camp, on the southern end of SPB, was ground zero for the state’s war against overly successful Chinese fishermen in the late 1800s – and later served as the picturesque filming location for John Wayne’s underappreciated 1955 film, “Blood Alley.”
North Bay alternative band Primus even set its mini-rock-opera “Fisherman’s Chronicles” on the San Pablo Bay.
“When he was young, you’d not find him doing well in school,” Primus frontman Les Claypool sings about a fisherman alienated from society seeking refuge “in the mudflats of San Pablo Bay.”
“His mind would turn unto the waters.”
It may not have the Golden Gate or “the Rock,” but this bay has its cool moments.
Email Jason at Jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.
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