By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, currently playing the heavy in the Richardson’s Bay anchor-out melodrama, was established 56 years ago in response to growing concern over Bay fill.
According to the Sausalito News of October 1963, “Establishment of a conservation and development commission with ‘unquestioned power’ to preserve San Francisco Bay was urged in a report issued by a research city planner at the University of California.”
(Only two years earlier, three Berkeley women had formed a group that became known as Save the Bay, which began to galvanize public opinion about safeguarding the bay’s future.)
PHOTO FROM SAVESFBAY.COM
Sylvia McLAughlin, Kay Kerr, and Esther Gulick, founders of Save the Bay
The report’s author, Mel Scott, of the U.C. Institute of Governmental Studies, sharply criticized indiscriminate public and private bay fill, and declared that a bay conservation agency “must be able to destroy forever the notion that the bay is a potential source of new living space.” Scott had presented a portion of his thesis at the annual meeting of the Marin Conservation League in Mill Valley several months prior.
After two years’ investigation, Scott pointed out that much of the bay was privately owned or controlled by cities and counties, and that all but 187 of its 435 square miles are shallow enough to be filled. In proposing a bay conservation and development commission created under a federal-state-local compact, Scott said “It must have authority superior to that of private interests, cities, and counties, and it must be subject only to extraordinary veto by the state and federal governments.”
Scott’s report concluded: “Considerable filling might be possible without adversely affecting navigation, fisheries and waste disposal, yet the sacrifice of scenic and recreational values might represent a tragic loss. Once destroyed, the unique charm of San Francisco Bay cannot be regained.”
The following year the State Legislature created the San Francisco Bay Conservation Study mission to ascertain the public interest in San Francisco Bay and the effects further fill would have upon navigation, fish and wildlife, air and water pollution, and “all of the regional needs of the future population of the region.”
At Save the Bay’s urging, the McAteer-Petris Act was enacted in 1965, and the BCDC was established. One of the first BCDC commissioners was Louis Ets-Hokins, a Marinite who had served on the study commission which had recommended establishment of the BCDC. (Ets-Hokin’s son, Jeremy, was a developer who gained his fifteen minutes of infamy when he acquired and tore down San Francisco’s beloved Playland at the Beach in 1973 to put in a condo complex, which he never completed.)
In its final edition of November 2, 1966, the Sausalito News reported “some startling statistics” offered by BCDC representative William Upton in a lengthy report to the Board of Supervisors:
“25 per cent of bay rights have been claimed by private parties. Most of the marshlands are in private hands. Out of 275 shoreline miles, only ten are open to public access. Thanks, however, to legislation and the formation of the BCDC, 27 members of which represent federal, various health and welfare, state, county, bay area offices, teeth have been put into procedures which will control and police, fill and excavation operation of the bay.”
Less than four acres of fill were permitted in the previous year, Upton reported. He explained that the commission has been preparing a detailed study of the San Francisco Bay and also a plan, “which, it is hoped, will protect bay waters, control fill and excavation projects. Mud flats, marshlands, waterfront industry come under the close scrutiny of the commission,” Upton said. “Out of these studies conclusions are formulated. Such an approach to bay planning will safeguard the bay for future generations.” Those studies culminated in the passage of the Bay Plan, which continues to provide a formula for developing the Bay and shoreline to their highest potential, while protecting the Bay as an irreplaceable natural resource. The BCDC is the agency designated to carry out the Bay Plan.