Chapter 12
San Francisco is filled with National Recreation Parks, this has influenced the city to be very environmentally concieious. I am sure that this environmental conciousness was present before the hippies of Haight and Ashbury back in the mid-1960s, but I am sure that some of their lifestyle that involved getting back to nature has influenced present day environmental conciousness.
One may visit San Francisco’s Department of the Environment’s website to see just how serious they are. <>
Recent Oil Spill in the Bay
Oil Surrounding Alcatraz
Oil Surrounding Alcatraz
A huge oil spill occurred in the San Francisco Bay on November 7, 2007. 58,000 gallons of oil seeped from an 810-foot-long containership as a result of it smashing into the base of the Bay Bridge. The Bridge suffered no structural damage, but wildlife will be in trouble for the weeks to come. On another economic level, the commercial crab season was coming up, but due to the spill, it has been postpone. It apparently was a bad fishing summer season, and now this.
An oil broom pulled up from the waters.
In the first few days, there was an overwhelming response of citizens volunteering to help clean up the oil spill, however they were turned away for safety reasons–the oil is just too hazardous for untrained people to handle. Training of this kind can take only 24 hours, but at the time, there was no time or offical trainers set up to train volunteers. The City of S.F. has about 150 specially trained municipal workers in this line of work, to help clean the beaches, but the Coast Guard has been reluctant to call on them, stating that they have it under control. Early this week of November 11th, the Coast Guard recognized that it as well as state and federal agencies were ill prepared to handle volunteer requests, and realize they lost out on a great resource those first few days. In response, the California Department of Fish and Game held instructional session for volunteers.
Those first eager citizens were given grunt work to do for Oiled Wildlife Care Network (www.owcn.org), an organization of UC Davis who are helping to save the birds. Citizens are not washing birds, but they are helping with food preperation, cleaning equipemtna and bird pins. (Fun fact: Ultra Dawn dish soap is what is being used to wash the oil off the birds, because it has been proven to work the best of them all. Proctor & Gamble, makers of UltraDawn have donated 30 cases of 22-ounce bottles for OWCN’s current work).
A volunteer picks up an oil-slicked bird
Here is one of the better articles pertaining to this incident, with a link that has a audio podcast of the Coast Guard talking with the newspaper The Chronicle, along with photographs
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/13/MNO2TB3AV.DTL&hw=oil+spill&sn=022&sc=573
Clean Technology
San Franciscos biggest economy draws are technology, biotechnology, health care, and telecommunications, in addition to tourism. But another technology of special interest to venture capitalist has been Clean Technology. What is meant by Clean Technology are innovations such as hybrid/electric vehicles, wind power, solar energy, and energy efficient building design. The Mayor of San Francisco has an initiative that works with the an advisory council to help put San Francisco at the hub of this business and job attraction strategies, and help establish public-private partnerships in this industry.
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