This is a story in two parts. Part 1 is an investigation of how Muni, after destroying Islais Creek Channel for years, now has one last chance to rescue the watershed from the brink of destruction. Part 2 is a first-person account of visiting some of SF's most prominent urban creeks. Our editorial and publishing partners, The Daily Casserole and The Bold Italic have published the two parts in this series.
Part 1 City Without Water: How Muni Has One Last Chance to Rescue SF's Largest Watershed
Read the at The Daily Casserole. (Available in print through The Potrero View).
This in-depth investigative report was underwritten in part by The Daily Casserole via Spot.us, a San Francisco-based open source project pioneering community-powered reporting. Matt Baume’s notebook on his experiences discovering urban creeks and watersheds is chronicled at The Bold Italic / San Francisco, an independent Web magazine. (Photo by Matt Baume)
Two men fished off the end of a pier at sunset on Saturday evening, their view framed by Sutro Tower, downtown highrises, and a rusting Bayview warehouse. Just a few feet away, a large yellow sign over the water, warning “Underground Sewer Crossing,” served as a perch for gulls. The T-Third Muni Metro clattered across a grooved metal bridge over the water, and on the opposite bank, some kids skateboarded around a windswept concrete promenade.
San Francisco’s Islais Creek at sundown is super-quiet. But not for much longer.
This is a portrait of a neighborhood on the brink. After thirty years of intense environmental campaigning, minor miracles, and disastrous setbacks, the fate of the creek’s westernmost end — a sliver of open water called Islais Creek Channel — hangs in the balance. And with it rests the enormous Islais Creek watershed, encompassing Potrero Hill, parts of the Mission and Castro, Noe Valley, Sunnyside, Oceanview, Crocker Amazon, Bernal Heights, Bayview, and the northern end of Hunter’s Point.
In the years to come, the health of Islais Creek will touch the lives of everyone in those neighborhoods as a massive new construction project could push the watershed over a tipping point to recovery or backwards into further degradation.
And in a strange twist, the fate of the channel rests largely in the hands of Muni — the same agency that’s been causing environmental disasters along the creek for the last 15 years.
A Hundred-Year Destruction
Islais Creek, Glen Canyon, San Francisco, circa 1890; Photo: Greg Gaar Collection, San Francisco, CA
Islais Creek is one of a few remaining natural bodies of water within the City. It’s also the easiest to find, originating in Glen Canyon Park, just south of Twin Peaks.
Few humans have seen the exact spot where it emerges from the hillside; the underbrush is far too thick for a person to penetrate, though the gurgle of water can be heard from trails along the hills. At its head, the primary beneficiaries are species like great horned owls, red-tailed hawks, mission blue butterflies, coyotes, songbirds, hummingbirds, field mice, lizards, and snakes. But just downstream, the plants thin out a bit, and you can stroll along the banks of the water amid flowers, old trees, and animal inhabitants. Gazing up at the hills from the canyon floor, you’d never know you were in a major city.
At the park’s southern end, the creek spills into a crusty metal grate, vanishing from sight until it emerges about four miles away in the Islais Creek Channel at the western edge of the city, just a block south of Cesar Chavez. A hundred years ago, the entire length of the creek was exposed to daylight, with kids playing in the water and boats navigating around Bernal Heights. These days, the water flows through decades-old underground pipes. Only an outline of it remains: drive along Interstate 280, and you’re following the path that the water once took.
Before the arrival of settlers, the Ohlone made use of the creek. Shellfish were plentiful, the water was clean enough to drink, and long the banks grew islay berries, which lent the water its name — the only site in San Francisco to bear a name derived from the language of its prior human inhabitants. Then, the mouth of the creek was two miles wide. Now it’s about the length of a city block.
In the late 1800s came Butchertown, an epicenter of slaughterhouses in what we now call Bayview. The running water was an effective means of carrying offal into the bay, but soon the water became polluted. Landfill and heavy industries followed, and gradually Islais Creek became narrower and filthier. By the 1950s, automobile scrap yards littered the area, the city was releasing untreated sewage into the channel, and it had become known colloquially as Shit Creek.
Rediscovery
Rehabilitation of urban creeks is a relatively new phenomenon. But as so often is the case, the Bay Area served as a pioneer: in the 1970s, Napa removed the cover from the buried Napa River, and in so doing unwittingly stumbled upon a practice that has come to be known as “daylighting.” Bringing long-buried creeks to the surface has a transformative effect on public awareness of water quality, and before long, cities around the bay were taking steps to clean their water and restore natural meanders.
Bonnie Ora Sherk, "Sitting Still 1", performance, 1970
One of the early champions of San Francisco’s watershed was artist Bonnie Ora Sherk. In the 1970s, she created one of her best-known works, “The Farm,” a seven-acre agricultural site adjacent to Highway 101. But prior to
that, she created “Sitting Still 1,” a performance piece that turned highway commuters into shoreline spectators.
“I came across a garbage area where some water had attracted adjacent to where they were then building the 101 interchange,” she said. “I intuitively knew it was a powerful site. … I immediately went home and put on an evening gown.”
Bonnie sat in an upholstered chair in the midst of a flooded ditch alongside the highway construction. It attracted stares. San Franciscans were finally starting to pay more attention to water, even if they didn’t know exactly what to do with it yet.
Rehabilitation work on Islais Creek Channel began in earnest in the late ’80s — but concern for the ecology of the watershed wasn’t the initial motivation. Neighborhood activists were spurred to action by the lack of services for youth in the area. “The kids we saw every day were going into the drug business,” said Robin Chiang, President of Friends of Islais Creek. He saw the creek as an opportunity to provide alternatives to neighborhood kids. “I had visions that the Bayview-Hunter’s Point crew team would challenge Stamford Crew and beat them.”
But progress was slow — just getting a permit to test the soil, for example, took 18 months. And in hindsight, many of the organization’s original goals are still unmet today. “The impetus for creating all this was that the funding would build the boathouse and learning resource center,” said Robin. After a pause, he added, “I’ve still got 20 years left to work on it.”
That’s not to say that the rehabilitation has been a failure. Just the opposite, in fact: new benches and native plantings have lined the channel for years now, thanks to the leadership of Robin Chiang and his collaborator Julia Viera. A small pocket of land was named for the Muwekma Ohlone, and volunteers began turning it into a sanctuary for native plants and birds. Schools visit the creek regularly to study water quality. Gradually, the area began to pick up, and enthusiasm grew.
“Sometimes a real seal will swim in there,” said Robin. “in the channel, it looks enormous. It looks like a whale.”
One of the most prominent upgrades included a paved pedestrian promenade on the north bank which quickly attracted legions of skateboarders.
A boat landing and kayak storage hut were built on the south bank, and stewardship was assigned to Kayaks Unlimited. In exchange for access, Kayaks Unlimited agreed to provide free kayaking lessons to any San Franciscan who asks — an arrangement that still exists to this day.
“No matter what we do, it can only get better,” Julia told the San Francisco Independent in 1992.
Muni Sets Back Progress
A roadblock came in the form of heavy rain in November 1994.
Earlier that month, a Muni employee had accidentally pumped 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel into a nearby sewer. Officials thought that they had contained the spill, but they hadn’t counted on a chance winter storm playing havoc with San Francisco’s unique sewage system.
Unlike any other California city, San Francisco combines all of its waste water into a single pipe. Runoff from storms, houses, businesses, and culverted creeks all flow together into water treatment plants before being cleanly released into the bay. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
During heavy rain, millions of gallons of water can enter the system within just a few hours. Unable to handle the volume, the city is forced to discharge untreated water into the bay — and that’s what happened in 1994 to Islais Creek.
Of those 6,000 leaked gallons, a third made it into the channel. Fish died and birds vanished as the city scrambled to clean the spill.
In response, the EPA ordered that a storm drain be built to prevent future overflows. That drain, built in 1997, now sits on the north bank of the channel, disguised beneath the skateboarder-friendly promenade.
The next setback came in November 2001. Drilling through the wet, marshy soil as part of construction on the T-Third line, Muni inadvertently dislodged a Public Utilities Commission pipe, spilling millions of gallons of sewage. In an attempt to repair the damage, 30 percent of the Muwekma Ohlone Park was destroyed; when the first round of repairs failed, 15 to 20 percent more was excavated.
“We want to return it to the state it was in before the accident,” said Muni spokeswoman Maggie Lynch in 2003. Today, the affected area is an empty dirt lot.
Then there was the Illinois Street bridge, a span built in 2005 across the channel, destroying a habitat for Pacific chorus frogs. Prior to construction, volunteers crawled on their hands and knees through the area, capturing as many frogs as they could and relocating them to a natural wetland at the foot of Potrero Hill. To this day, you can still hear frogs calling at night below the public housing on the hillside.
Incredibly, Muni again spilled diesel into the creek in 2005, under nearly the same circumstances as the 1994 spill. This time, Muni employeers went so far as to disable an alarm that would have alerted someone to the leaking fuel, failed to react to the spill, failed to document their eventual response, and failed to monitor fuel levels. The source of the rupture: an improperly-maintained hose that leaked 39,000 gallons, according to the EPA.
For this latest spill, and for clean water violations subsequently discovered at other facilities, Muni was fined $250,000. The agency promised it would never happen again.
The string of disasters took a heavy toll on volunteers, particularly since much of their restoration work was done below the city’s radar and without proper permits. Calling themselves the Islais Creek Guerilla Gardeners, they’d made extensive ecological progress. But once Muni had undone their work — repeatedly — the unauthorized stewards found themselves with little legal recourse.
Eventually, even Julie Viera, the tireless leader of Friends of Islais Creek, had had enough. Robin Chiang described how, one night at her home in Bayview, she heard an AK-47 and reached defensively for her own gun before asking herself if this was the life she wanted. The answer was no: at the age of 78, she retired from volunteer work, moved to Coronado, California and became a realtor. (But despite her “retirement,” Robin reports, she’s currently hard at work on cleanup projects for Imperial Beach.)
One Last Chance
Muni’s Kirkland Motor Coach Division is nearly at the end of its life. This year the busyard, just across the street from Pier 39, enters its sixtieth year; since the site is inefficiently designed and poorly-equipped to handle modern vehicles, Muni intends to close the facility and relocate operations to a parcel of land on the shore of Islais Creek.
The proposal for the Islais Creek facility is bold. Working with the Friends of Islais Creek and the Bay Conservation and Development Corporation, Muni has pledged to extend the existing promenade further west, under the 280 overpass and out to Cesar Chavez as a bike trail, connecting to further bike and pedestrian upgrades. A wildflower meadow will sit adjacent to the trail, and a 500-foot-long sculpture of a liberty ship by artist Nobi Nagasawa will commemorate the channel’s labor history.
“It’s been postponed and postponed, and now it’s going to be re-bid this month,” said Friends of Islais Creek’s Robin Chiang. “Let’s hope it works.”
Muni seems to be aware of its past failings along the channel, and has eagerly shared its ambitious plans for ensuring a clean construction process. (The agency responded to requests for information with a description of extensive environmental precautions planned for the construction site and the eventual bus yard.) Construction vehicles must use biofuel; contaminated soil will be identified and removed from the site; phone numbers must be posted so that the public can report illegally idling trucks. An in-depth dust-control program will monitor air quality, wash vehicles before leaving the site, and cover excavations with tarps.
Crucially, water from construction will be diverted away from storm drains; and water quality will be continually monitored, with penalties imposed on polluters of up to $25,000 plus cleanup costs.
The buildings too have been designed with sustainability in mind: clerestory windows will use daylight for climate control and lighting, recycled concrete and asphalt will be employed where possible, and even office furniture will be re-used from other city facilities.
Meanwhile, on the south shore of the channel, efforts are underway to establish a food-preparation hub. Currently, there are a number of businesses spread around the San Francisco Peninsula that prepare and distribute pre-packaged meals, and employees and suppliers often have to travel great distances. Organizers hope that a catering center on Islais Creek, just two blocks away from the produce district, would improve efficiency for the companies and provide opportunities for workers.
“The fellow who runs the San Francisco produce district is really keen to have it,” said Robin. “And [Supervisor] Sophie [Maxwell] is an advocate, and the Planning Department likes it, and the port likes it. But it would require a redevelopment district to make it happen. … The catering industry right now is happy where they are … you’re not going to get them back in San Francisco, because of the labor costs and benefits. … If it’s a redevelopment district, then the district itself could offset the rents, so it would help make it competitive.”
Benefits Beyond the Waterfront
“This is another opportunity — I want to make sure that they’re paying attention to the watershed,” said artist Bonnie Sherk about the impending projects on the creek. “I want to support the PUC in changing methodology and work together. … We have the resources. Let’s do it right.”
After all, Islais Creek is more than just a narrow strip of water on the bay; it reaches through neighborhoods throughout the southern end of the city all the way up into Glen Canyon Park. With the extension of the bike route and wildflower meadow, the city moves incrementally closer to revitalizing the creek.
Could more of Islais Creek someday return to the surface? It’s possible. The Public Utilities Commission, which manages the city’s water, is currently studying an extensive daylighting plan that could gradually daylight the creek from Glen Canyon Park to the bay. Current ideas include creating an exposed waterway through Alemany Farm and Farmer’s Market, and along the median on Alemany Boulevard. There’s even a possibility that the PUC could convert a parking lot at the west end of the channel into a wetland.
These are all highly speculative plans, still pending extensive study and public input. But around the city, the restoration of ecological trails is gaining momentum. For example, artist Amber Hasselbring is working on a “Mission Greenbelt” plan that would create a path of sidewalk winding through the Mission. So far, she’s established plantings to anchor the project at 19th and Linda, and another at 22nd and Shotwell, featuring native plants like blue elderberries that attract birds.
And this time, rehabilitation efforts aren’t limited the guerrilla gardeners. The city has launched an ambitious “Blue Greenway” project to improve the entire southeastern waterfront.
Back on Islais Creek Channel, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and many years over which to do it. The progress of Muni’s long-awaited bus yard will be a key indicator as to the future of the creek.
But thirty years after he began his campaign on behalf of underprivileged neighborhood kids, Robin Chiang notes that there’s room for optimism. While his organization has focused on the restoration of the channel, other neighborhood initiatives have appeared.
At the recent Sunday Streets event along Third Street, passing directly above the channel, Robin noted that kids and families were out in droves. “It was like a miracle! Not only that they can ride their bicycles on 3rd street, but it’s probably the first time they felt really safe. … Why shouldn’t they feel safe walking and riding on their streets every day?”
Part 2: The Barbary Creek
Matt Baume dips his toes in the hidden waterways of San Francisco.
There I was, drenched and freezing and all by myself, flailing through the underbrush in the Presidio in the middle of a storm. "Who wears sneakers in a downpour?" I asked out loud, curling my toes into water-logged fists.
And then, I nearly stepped directly into the very thing I'd come looking for: Dragonfly Creek, one of the few remaining visible bodies of fresh water in the city.
Even in the heavy rain, it was just a thin trickle of water, winding past the Presidio Nursery and off toward the old stables, incinerator, and pet cemetery below the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge.
For more of Matt's personal story visiting creeks in the Bay Area go to The Bold Italic where it has been designed into a beautiful tale.
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