House OKs $25M Bay assistance

“I think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that four million jobs are associated with the Bay,” Speier said. “And it is one of those areas that really deserves our attention. Twenty million people in the Bay Area get their water through the estuary so making sure that it’s in prime condition is important.”

San Mateo County is also in particular at ground zero for sea level rise.

“The reason that it’s urgent to get more of this work started sooner is precisely because sea levels are rising,” said David Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit Save the Bay. “If we can get more of these marshes revegetated and at least started, with plants in them, before too much sea level rise, they can actually adjust to changes in sea levels.”

Lewis worked with Speier for the first time in 2010 to draft a bill to create this kind of program. This legislation failed to pass the Senate twice last year but he is hopeful it will pass this time. If it does, it would create the program for at least for five years and possibly be extended.

Scientists have been saying many of these marshes need to get restarted and regrowing in the next 10 years starting now, Lewis stressed.

“We are right now in a drought, but we also know we’re going to get more extreme rainstorms and higher tides. When those happen together, we’re going to see flooding, bigger risk of flooding in East Palo Alto, Redwood City, Redwood Shores and Foster City,” he said.

From 2008 to 2016, the Bay received about $45 million, while Puget Sound received $260 million and Chesapeake Bay received $490 million, despite the Bay being the largest estuary on the West Coast, said Speier.

The funding could be used for wetlands restoration, for pollution reduction and for sea level rise adaptation. All of which would require billions of dollars over the next several decades, Lewis said.

“San Francisco Bay has never had that kind of a program, a focused geographic program for protecting San Francisco Bay,” he said. “The federal government is way behind on making this kind of investment. And it’s very unfair that San Francisco Bay has not received the kind of investment that other parts of the coast of the United States have. And this bill is trying to correct that.”

San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine, who serves as the chair of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority board, echoed the importance of establishing tidal wetlands and addressing sea level rise in here stating it is the most exposed in the state of California.


“These efforts in the South Bay are really critical to protect the county’s infrastructure,” he said. “We don’t have any time to waste to start these projects.”

The San Francisco Bay Restoration Act would establish a San Francisco Bay Program Office within the Environmental Protection Agency.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also spoke out on the floor of the House in favor of the bill.

“Today 90% of the Bay Area’s wetlands have been destroyed. Undermining the strength of our coastal economies and communities,” she said. “The San Francisco Bay restoration act sponsored by Congresswoman Jackie Speier, championed by her over the years would make long overdue $125 million, with an investment in restoration efforts.”

julia@smdailyjournal.com

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