Eco Blog: dedication to Green Hauling

What’s better than finding a parking spot? How about finding a place to sit, have a cup of coffee, read the paper, and meet your neighbors? With San Francisco’s highly-praised parklet program, this is exactly what you can do.

The two-year old program called Pavement to Parks allows San Francisco businesses and residents to propose parklet designs to the city. And the city has found a clever way to reduce bureaucracy, red tape, and excessive time from proposal to parklet: they let citizens build the parklets themselves.

Building a parklet can be expensive. Costs, including permits and construction, can run up to $20,000. There’s an additional rental fee of $200 that is paid to the city. Businesses sometimes go to Kickstarter, or other creative funding sources to create a park.

Some parklets are seating areas for cafes, others are small displays of art. But all parklets are public spaces and work to encourage foot traffic and neighborhood participation. They also encourage people to slow down and support local businesses.

KTVU ran a story recently expressing some backlash at the parklet system. The disappointed people that they interviewed were those who claimed there was already too little parking in the city. At the last count, there were 441,541 parking spaces in San Francisco. Currently there are proposals for 70 parklets. That’s hardly a number that ought to concern drivers. Also consider that the folks that they interviewed were coming in from San Jose and Walnut Creek. There is a CalTrain station in San Jose and a BART station in Walnut Creek–perhaps they should consider public transportation.

The parklet system is about more than reducing places to park and replacing them with places to sit. It’s about changing the way we think about our city–not as places to drive through, but places to live in. Foot traffic is healthier, more sustainable, and better for local business. Have a seat!

When a story comes to light that involves hauling, disposal, and dangerous radiation levels, it will always be of interest to us. And when it’s something that happens so local to San Francisco, you’ve really got our attention.

San Francisco’s plan to build high-rise house for 20,000 people on Treasure Island has just become a lot more interesting. According to NBC, a recent US Navy report discloses the presence of radiation on the island that had been previously undiscovered. Immediately, the state pressed the Navy (who currently owns much of Treasure Island) to reveal the source of the radiation.

So here’s the fascinating part: the Navy had used Treasure Island to repair, tear down, recycle and incinerate material from ships that had been exposed to 1940s era atomic testing. Navy contractors have dug up 16,000 cubic yards of construction debris with dangerously high radiation levels. Removal is underway, and 1,000 truckloads of radioactive material have already left the island.

The Navy had, until recently, been tight-lipped about their use of Treasure Island years ago. The information certainly might have affected residents’ decisions to live near the waste and dismantling sites. However, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee claims that these new discoveries will not delay construction plans on the island. The city still plans to purchase the land from the Navy and build the $1.5 billion development.

The Navy claims that radiation levels have been overstated and that they remain committed to the safety of Treasure Island. Although residents are understandably affected by the idea that their island was once used to house and wash radiation-soaked vessels.

Safe and responsible construction debris removal is always a tricky topic. We hope that the city and the Navy respond carefully and responsibly to the situation.

Gigantic plumes of black smoke rose into the air above the San Francisco Bay last morning. The local residents of Richmond were issued a shelter-in-place warning; living in the area, I saw the warning before I read the news and got a very scared for a few minutes. Wet towels were placed beneath doorways and in windowsills. And as a giant fire raged through a Chevron oil refinery, we were all reminded of the huge environmental cost of burning fossil fuels.

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