Greenbacks for Blueprint

SFEP - Blueprint



Greenbacks
16
Jun

Greenbacks for Blueprint

For the first time in decades, California’s federal estuary management and water quality programs are getting a big bump in bankroll. Priority actions in the newly updated Estuary Blueprint, a 25-action consensus plan for improving the health of San Francisco Bay and the Delta, are poised to take advantage of a new influx of federal money. “We’re fortunate with timing,” says San Francisco Estuary Partnership (SFEP) environmental planner Darcie Luce. Completed this spring, the 2022 Blueprint includes some well-thought-out actions oriented toward greening grey infrastructure, making the region more resilient to climate change, and improving equity in adaptation planning and projects — all of which are federal priorities.  The new money will flow toward Estuary Blueprint actions and related projects...
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23
Mar

Refreshing the Estuary Blueprint

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s next update to its 2016 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the Estuary—or Estuary Blueprint—will bring a new focus on equity and environmental justice to ongoing efforts to restore and protect the Bay and Delta. “We really want to do more to engage communities of color and indigenous communities as partners in our work,” says Partnership Director Caitlin Sweeney. “So we are looking at all our actions and initiatives through the lens of environmental justice and racial equity inclusion, as we do with climate change.” Sweeney says the update’s steering committee is taking a multi-pronged approach to integrating equity and environmental justice into the Partnership’s work. “We are looking at every single one of the...
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20
Mar

Attention to Outcomes

The new Wetland Regional Monitoring Program, funded through an EPA Region 9 Wetlands Program Development Grant and managed by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, aims to revolutionize the way that data is collected and shared about one of the Bay Area’s most fragile yet resilient ecosystems -- wetlands. “Monitoring data sits on shelves,” says Heidi Nutters...
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13
Dec

Estuary Partners Choose their Battles Coast to Coast

A boatload of estuary experts from around the country gathered on an early October day to tour the prettiest part of San Francisco Bay. They paid rather less attention to Alcatraz and the Golden Gate than to each other. In town for the National Estuary Program’s annual Tech Transfer Conference, they had come to compare notes and strategies from the 28 varied bays, bights, bayous, and river mouths that benefit from one of the nation’s most durable, and efficient, environmental laws. In 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act, Congress proclaimed selected tidewater regions to be “estuaries of national significance” and offered money to help local coalitions take on environmental problems there. Through all the political gyrations since, a thin...
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19
Mar

North Richmond Transitions

Today’s North Richmond shoreline looks much different from its historic blend of baylands, mudflats, and wet meadows. A lot of the land has been filled, or else fragmented by transit and industry. The region’s three creeks — the Rheem, the San Pablo, and the Wildcat  are mostly behind levees for flood control (the San Pablo and Wildcat Creek levees were raised in late 2017). The shoreline, and the 500 meters inland where the optimal marsh-upland transition zone could exist is bounded on one end by Chevron’s Richmond Refinery and by an Amazon distribution center and other new, massive warehouses at the other end. The middle of this zone is cut, not by long tidal plains or gentle sloping uplands, but...
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18
Mar

Moving West for the Greater Good

The San Francisco Estuary Partnership is optimistic that a move to the Bay Area Metro Center will offer new opportunities for collaboration with other regional agencies sharing the same roof.
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26
Mar

Rethinking our Grandest Plan for the Estuary

Changing estuarine conditions and new pressures from ongoing urbanization and development, as well as from climate change, inspired estuary planners to undertake a revision to the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) in 2014. The CCMP, first published in 1993 and most recently updated in 2007, was the first master plan for improving the health of the estuary encompassing San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento- San Joaquin River Delta. The intent of the current update — a project still led and managed by the San Francisco Estuary Partnership (SFEP) — is to streamline the current plan, which contains more than 200 actions, and refocus on contemporary concerns.
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28
Oct

Fish Down, Invasions Up, Flooding Soon

Whether you’re a fat salmon or a skinny smelt, life in the watershed of the San Francisco Estuary remains far from “natural.” Dams and levees block Estuary fish, alien clams compete for fish food, invasive weeds clog habitats, and exotic predators threaten life and fin. A few native species are holding their own, but others, like Delta smelt, have declined to such a degree that there are too few to count. Clearly, we have failed to stem the decline and ensure the recovery of native fish as we set out to do twenty years ago.
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Estuary News 2013
08
Oct

Estuary News: October 2013, CCMP 20th Anniversary Issue

It takes longer but the results are better. After two decades of listening, learning, and debating, most stakeholders from the San Francisco Bay watershed agree that the best way to do business is to work together. We save more species, build more habitat, use less water, spend less money. Partnerships make the water go round.
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