Project Successes

Since forming in 1997, in anticipation of plans for massive development along the City’s waterfront, the Alliance has made significant progress in setting San Francisco on a path for sustainable water management. Achievements include:

• Preventing the discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of combined sewage overflows from the new Mission Bay development, setting a precedent for San Francisco’s storm water management practices (1998);
• Securing agreement from the Mission Bay developers to improving habitat along Mission Creek Channel;
• Partnering with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission secure Environmental Protection Agency funds to investigate sustainable, on-site water treatment options for the Hunters Point Shipyard (2000);
• Forcing major improvements in the analysis of sewage and storm water treatment in the Hunters Point Shipyard Environmental Impact Statement and Review (EIS/EIR);
• Working with the Port of San Francisco to develop a comprehensive, ecological-engineering based storm water management plan of the Southern Waterfront (2000-2003);
• Leading the environmental community’s demand that San Francisco International Airport conduct thorough scientific analysis and allow for public review before expanding its runways (2000-2004, supported by The Foundation’s Bay Fund);
• Preventing the passage of the PUC’s $1 billion flawed Clean Water Program Capital Improvement Plan and sending the PUC back to the drawing board with a mandate to develop an environmentally sustainable and just water management master plan (2001/2002);
• Collaborating with Supervisors Maxwell and Ammiano and the PUC to establish goals and objectives for the Clean Water Program Master Plan and to author legislation for a new Public Utilities Commission Citizens Advisory Committee that will be the community’s voice in the development of a state-of-the-art environmentally sustainable and just water treatment plan (2001-2004).