Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
TAKE A LOOK
and a sniff of the bay and most days you'll find it relatively
refreshing. Four decades ago, however, San Francisco Bay smelled like old
sneakers. Locals heading down to the bay for a Sunday stroll were more
likely to find a garbage dump than a shoreline path edged with wild straw-
berries and purple sage. No one took their toddlers to wade in the gentle
chop or donned a wetsuit to windsurf back then—bay water was too unap-
pealing. In those days, residents of the East Bay hills could actually see the
bay shrinking as cities filled their shallows with sand and rock to build out
beyond their natural shores.
The bold strokes of environmental protection that saved the bay and
nurtured today's upwelling of conservation and restoration work had their
seeds in the 1960s. It was in this decade that the bay arrived at a visible
breaking point. In just 250 years—a much shorter time span than most
civilizations—the region had grown from a wilderness at the edge of an
ocean into an urban metropolis. In the process, millions of people, thou-
sands of vessels, hundreds of industries, and acres of development had ar-
rived on the bayshore, along with all the unpleasant by-products of their
activities.
Storm drains spilling into San Francisquito Creek in East Palo Alto. (Jude Stalker)
Former
San Francisco Chronicle
journalist Harold Gilliam wrote of the
first citizens to stand up for the bay against big business and “progress” in
the 1960s and 1970s: “It would be absurd to compare saving the bay to sav-
ing the earth, which will require revolutionary changes in the way all of us
