California
ianumeda-_mg_5022-1024x682.jpg

California’s Market for Hard-to-Verify Carbon Offsets Could Let Industry Pollute as Usual

07.08.2013
|
By

Timber, dairy and chemical companies are lining up to sell  carbon credits, which regulators call “offsets,” to the largest California polluters so they can compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. Many environmentalists say that because it is notoriously difficult to prove that such projects actually reduce the state’s overall carbon footprint, California should proceed slowly in approving a vast expansion of the cap-and-trade market. This story is part of a special report on climate change in the summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

Housing
hammock_popgrwtraffic_002c.jpg

Ever-changing population predictions frustrate Bay Area smart-growth planning

06.25.2012
|
By

State and regional planning agencies have produced differing predictions of how many people will migrate to the Bay Area in coming decades. The disagreement is frustrating efforts to forge a consensus on how many hundreds of thousands of new homes to build across the region, and where. In May, the California Department of Finance took a fresh look at economic forecasts and officially backed away from its prediction that 9.5 million people would live in the Bay Area in 2040. The state now says it is likely to be closer to 8.4 million. But the Association of Bay Area Governments pegged the population for the same 2040 target date at a robust 9.3 million. The agency is charged with developing Plan Bay Area, an ambitious agenda to reshape the sprawling region by building 660,000 new homes in the urban image of walkable, transit-friendly San Francisco.

Bay Area
occupysaltworks_web.jpg

Tea partiers and Occupiers make strange bedfellows opposing sprawl control

06.21.2012
|
By

So far, Plan Bay Area — an ambitious regional blueprint for dense urban communities convenient for walking and public transit — seems to have more strident critics than defenders. Some libertarians, liberal Democrats, environmentalists, professional urban planners and anti-capitalist Occupiers have all found issue with parts of the plan, and the way its authors have sought public opinion.

Bay Area
_mg_0858-saltworksfromaplane.jpg

Don’t build neighborhood on SF Bay salt flats, Redwood City voters say in new poll

05.18.2011
|
By

A new poll by a regional environmental group, Save the Bay, puts a new spin on the controversy in Redwood City over plans to build a massive development on unused salt ponds on the edge of San Francisco Bay. Fifty-seven percent of voters polled said they opposed Arizona developer DMB Associates’ proposal to build a mini-city by partially paving over 1,436 acres of low-lying salt ponds on the eastern edge of Redwood City. Only 28 percent of those polled supported the plan while the remaining 15 percent were neutral. Save the Bay says the poll should be a warning sign to politicians inclined to approve the plan. But developers called the poll itself flawed.

Environment
Front.jpg

Huge development on fringe of Bay sparks debate over ‘smart growth’

11.10.2010
|
By

New community of up to 12,000 homes, offices and schools would be built on site of Cargill Saltworks in Redwood City.

A wide dirt road cuts through the middle of the large, multi-hued salt harvesting ponds that stretch as far as the eye can see. Except for a few heavy trucks that trundle past, and a couple of ramshackle buildings, not much sign of human activity is visible on this stark, sweeping landscape in Redwood City, on the southern fringe of the San Francisco Bay.

Bay Area
_MG_1469.jpg

Story in progress: Veteran smart growth group wary of rushing to judgment

09.27.2010
|
By

The other day we had a chance to chat over the phone with Jeremy Madsen, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance. This much-respected nonprofit has been advocating smart growth and open spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1958. In 2008 the outfit published Smart Infill, a 80-page report that recommends infill development — building on vacant lots and redeveloping blighted urban areas — as a way of accommodating the Bay Area’s growing population without paving the region’s farms and natural areas.

Bay Area
_MG_1058-ABAG_0.jpg

Story in progress: ‘Smart growth’ or bay fill in Redwood City? ABAG has the numbers

09.20.2010
|
By

The Bay Area needs more homes for its growing population, but does it make sense to house 30,000 people on unstable land, in earthquake country, that’s also at high risk of inundation by rising sea waters? A massive development proposal on the fringes of the San Francisco Bay, in one of the last potentially developable areas in the region, is raising questions about the definition of smart growth. [The Public Press is developing an in-depth report for the fall print edition and the website. We are raising funds on the journalism micro-funding site Spot.us to pay for the reporting and photography on the story.]

Bay Area
Screen-shot-PAProp.jpg

Judge orders release of documents in failed CalPERS real estate investment

09.15.2010
|
By

A judge has ordered the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to release key documents related to a failed $100 million real estate investment in East Palo Alto. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte Wollard wrote in her ruling in the lawsuit by the First Amendment Coalition that public interest in the documents “far outweighs any asserted interest in non-disclosure” given the amount of public money lost.

Bay Area
_MG_0722-saltworks_maureenonsalt_9.jpg

Is it ‘smart growth’ to build in the San Francisco Bay? Updates from the field

09.13.2010
|
By

The Bay Area needs more homes for its growing population, but does it make sense to house 30,000 people on unstable land, in earthquake country, that’s also at high risk of inundation by rising sea waters? A massive development proposal on the fringes of the San Francisco Bay, in one of the last potentially developable areas in the region, is raising questions about the definition of smart growth. [The Public Press is developing an in-depth report for the fall print edition and the website. We are raising funds on the journalism micro-funding site Spot.us to pay for the reporting and photography on the story.]