Around 50 people, including residents, government officials, and environmental justice leaders, met at the Southeast Community Center in Bayview on Tuesday evening.
The city's planning department convened the meeting to collect community input for the Yosemite Slough Neighborhood Adaptation Plan. The slough is a wetland that extends inland from the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area.
"The area around Yosemite Slough is some of the lowest lying areas of the city by elevation," explained Danielle Ngo, a senior planner for the city and county of San Francisco.
What’s in that water, and the tidal mud beneath it, are also concerns. For decades, industrial waste and contaminated stormwater flowed into the slough. The pollution is so bad that the EPA considers it as a Superfund site. But that’s not part of tonight’s conversation. The goal of this meeting was to get feedback on two design options for protecting the area from sea level rise.
"One features a living sea wall, and the second features an ecotone levee," said Ngo.
The sea wall would create a hard barrier along the edge of the wetland. The submerged portion could provide habitat for aquatic species. It’s the cheaper and faster option, but could limit views of the bay. The levee option would be designed to mimic a natural shoreline.
"An ecotone levee has a lot of soil plant life on top in kind of a gentle slope," Ngo explained.
This approach is costlier, requires more maintenance, and would require the city buying some of the land surrounding the slough. Attendees preferred this option despite concerns about impacts to local businesses that border the slough.
Precious Green, a program manager with En2Action, a community engagement partner on the project, said reaching local business owners has been challenging. But she said it’s vital that this effort be community-led.
That means bringing them into every step, she said. "Seeing them as the experts that they are, incorporating their feedback into the technical expertise and developing plans and solutions that ultimately will serve the needs of climate and the community."
Green called it the key to sustainable resilience.
But, Yosemite Slough can’t be redesigned until the EPA finishes cleaning up the Superfund site. And that work hasn’t even started. The agency did not respond in time to KALW’s request for comment.
