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Spare the Air, Save the Bay

Most Bay Area commuters know that the hours they spend sitting in slow or stopped traffic every week not only fray tempers but also waste gas and pollute the air. Few realize that they poison the Bay and Delta as well.

"Water quality is just one more reason to plan transportation systems more carefully," says Geoff Brosseau of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association (BASMAA). Cars contribute to stormwater pollution both directly, by depositing pollutants-such as crankcase drippings and copper from brake pads-onto roadways and parking lots, and indirectly, through atmospheric deposition of soot and smog.

According to the S.F. Estuary Institute's Rainer Hoenicke, automobile exhaust is a major source of PAHs in the water column and Bay sediment. "Air people and water people are not used to talking to each other, but there is a growing interest in working together," says Brosseau. During Bike to Work Week in May, for example, BayKeeper joined forces with the S.F. Bicycle Coalition to draw attention to cars as a source of stormwater pollution. The Baykeeper boat sported a banner reading "Spare the Air and the Bay-Bike for Clean Water." The S.F. Bay Commission is also reportedly considering making greater bicycle access a condition of permit approval for planned retrofitting of area bridges.

Pat Ferraro of the Silicon Valley Pollution Prevention Center believes that having representatives of diverse agencies, including the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, on his board of directors helps improve the dialogue between water agencies and those responsible for land use and transportation decisions. "We get opportunities to do incredible things because we've got everybody at the table," he says.

The impact of traffic on water quality was a central issue at the Center's State of the South Bay Symposium earlier this spring. Among the panelists was Mountain View city planner Mike Percy, who says that water quality issues were one of the considerations that led to new zoning designed to concentrate housing and employment near planned light rail and CalTrain stations. The city's general plan explicitly links transportation and water quality, and calls for congestion management strategies.

While few would dispute that automobiles are a major source of water pollution, no one is quite sure precisely what pollutants they contribute or in what quantities. The S.F. Regional Board and BASMAA are launching a joint project to determine what data the local Air Quality Management District has collected that might help provide this information. "We will be looking at their data and asking different questions, like are they measuring the right things and can we translate their data into meaningful units for water quality managers," says Brosseau. Brosseau notes that the Air District project will be coordinated with an Estuary Institute pilot study on aerial deposition. That study will use monitoring stations throughout the Bay Area to determine the magnitude of air deposition as a source of pollutant loadings to the Estuary. Eventually, says Hoenicke, the study will try to determine source categories for pollutants. "This will help tell us where we should be allocating our resources," he says.

While the science side of the multi-media impacts equation is just getting started, the public education side is already on the road. In the South Bay, for example, the Palo Alto Sewage Treatment Plant, Stanford University, the City of Palo Alto, CalTrain, SamTrans, AC Transit, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and others are participating in a campaign featuring grocery bags, refrigerator magnets and other public education materials bearing the slogan "Try Transit, Spare the Air, Save the Bay," along with Flo the Raccoon, mascot of the treatment plant's storm drain program, and a number telling callers how to use public transit to get anywhere in the Bay Area. Flo also rides the shuttle that carries passengers to downtown Palo Alto for special events such as the annual arts festival. "The water quality message is very much part of the program," says coordinator Dena Mossar.

Although cutting the number of vehicle miles traveled is vital to water quality protection, experts say reducing pollution from runoff will also mean rethinking the design of streets and highways to reduce impermeable surface area. "Many cities require wide streets and over-paving to create habitat for automobiles. That is contrary to the situation we would want for water quality protection," says the S.F. Regional Board's Tom Mumley. "We've got to try to make sure that water quality impacts are on the radar screen as land use and transportation decisions are being made," says Ferraro.

Contact: Pat Ferraro (408)291-0131, Geoff Brosseau (510)286-0615 or Dena Mossar (415)853-4794

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