potrero view

March 2009

San Francisco Attempts to Reduce Pollution at New Residential Developments

Andrea de Brito

Sporting a Chinese lucky number in its address, 888 7th Street sits across the street from the 280 Freeway, Golden Gate Disposal and Recycling offices, and the Caltrain tracks.  The recently constructed complex is noticeable in the middle of Potrero Hill’s old industrial belt.  Its exterior is clad with futuristic-looking lime green sheets of glass, installed not only for modern appeal but to block the courtyard and the building’s interior spaces from noise and air pollution. Though sleek signs with the developer’s contact information still decorate the building’s sides, all of its units have been sold.

Similar condominium complexes are popping up throughout Southeast San Francisco, often clustered hard against the 101 and 280 freeways. It’s difficult to find space to develop in the City, which is why locating residential buildings next to freeways, once undesirable locations, have become the norm.  

On the other side of the train tracks from 888, inaccessible from 7th Street due to a fence that runs along the tracks, is a complex built by Bridge Corporation, an affordable housing developer that’s currently redeveloping the Potrero Hill public housing complexes.  Sharing pungent fumes from the Channel Street wastewater pump station, Bridge’s Crescent Cove apartments follow the railroad track’s crescent curve on one side and face 280 on the other. The complexes’ parking lot sits directly under the freeway.  “Before I moved in [to Crescent Cove], traditional Chinese friends of mine told me facing a freeway like that is bad feng shui. But I got used to it. But I’m still not used to the terrible odor from the wastewater pump in the mornings,” said a Crescent Cove resident, who then swiped his finger along an exterior windowsill to show the accumulated dust.  Though it’s hard to ignore the constant whoosh of vehicles speeding overhead, many residents say that double-paned windows help seal out the noise and air pollution, and most residents spend their off-hours inside.  Rather than trees, many condominium dwellers benefit from the shelter of nearby taller buildings, which serve as noise and air pollution barriers.

“Air pollutant exposures and health effects are much higher for people living near freeways and other busy roadways,” the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) reported in 2008. A recent Bay Area study found that children living within 75 meters of a freeway had almost four times the prevalence of asthma when compared to children living more than 300 meters away. Yet, in a peninsula city with uneven topography, there’s virtually no way to avoid building near freeways. And strong winds can intensify freeway pollution in some neighborhoods by directing emissions right at them.

Last November, San Francisco became the first United States city to require developers to assess new residential projects of 10 units or more for their proximity to traffic and associated risk of indoor particulate matter.  If indoor particulate matter were estimated to exceed a certain level, developers are required to install ventilation systems that reduce indoor pollutants by 80 percent.

According to SFDPH, air pollution hot spots created by freeways are not currently regulated by state and federal air quality regulations. In 2005, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) recommended against constructing residential buildings within 500 feet of a freeway.  In 2007, the San Francisco Planning Department began requiring that developments near air pollution hot spots conduct air quality assessments and mitigation.  “The 2005 CARB guidance was voluntary and was not enforced by Planning or other responsible City agencies. The CARB guidance also did not offer any mitigation consistent with building in hot spot areas. San Francisco Public Health Department used the CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] process, and the City designed the new law both to create an enforceable requirement and to create a process where the impact could be mitigated,” said Rajiv Bhatia, SFDPH’s Director of Environmental Health.  The new requirement doesn’t apply to existing residential developments. Bhatia, whose study, Developing Approaches to Traffic-Related Hot Spots, provided the basis for the Indoor Air Quality Ordinance, said a new law would be required to regulate existing buildings.

On the other side of Channel Street’s veritable condominium row, which extends from 7th to 4th streets along Mission Creek, sit the Mission Bay library branch, a Phil’z coffee shop, an environmentally-friendly drycleaner, and a senior housing complex for Section 8 tenants. In certain ways the strip, which is isolated from the surrounding South-of-Market streets, gives the impression of community, or that it might flower into one once all the construction stops.  Many residents enjoy the neighborhood, especially now that the dust to earlier construction phases has settled.

A landscaped dog park and tennis court next to the wastewater pump – owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission – walking paths along Mission Creek’s wetland restoration, and a new kayak launching pad lend a sense of active engagement with the local environment. Yet some professionals in the neighborhood see it at most as a convenient place to live if you work downtown.  “This is not really a neighborhood,” Lynn Boquiren, a resident who works downtown, said. “This is for commuters, not for people to hang out.  The new buildings in this neighborhood are also attracting young physicians and researchers from the UCSF [University of California, San Francisco] branch across the way.”

The new law requires that developers include a disclosure and mitigation agreement in their leases. The original requirement for an informational plaque – which would have been placed in buildings located within a “Potential Roadway Exposure Zone” – was ultimately removed from the ordinance, according to Tom Rivard, SFDPH Senior Environmental Health Specialist. The ventilation systems, not to mention the pollution testing, are expensive:  it can cost roughly $700 a year for a ventilation system for one unit.  But the annual cost of medical problems associated with pollution, estimated at $2,100 a year per unit, trumps filtering expenses, according to the SFDPH study. The net economic benefit from the ordinance is $1,400 per impacted unit each year.  “...the net economic impacts for San Francisco as a whole are positive,” stated the SFDPH report.

Instant neighborhoods, like the one on Channel Street, appeal to the business class in part due to the nearby greenbelt.  But what good does an active life in the urban outdoors – jogging, playing tennis, kayaking, dog-walking, and socializing – do for people that live directly under or within meters of major freeways? Ventilation systems may meet the latest green building standards, but cannot be installed outdoors.   “I find it odd that they’re building that area up as a green area. I don’t know why people would want to be near those areas. I’ve kayaked up that creek and it’s pretty disgusting,” said Mark Walther, a lawyer who lives at 22nd and Pennsylvania streets, kitty corner to 280, the 22nd Street Caltrain station, and a Muni depot and repair building.

In 2005, a Muni pipe that was attached to underground diesel tanks ruptured.  For weeks the accident went undiscovered.  Thirty thousand gallons of fuel were released into the ground and nearby Islais Creek.  “[Muni] never notified the community,” said Walther. “I smelled it and then there was an article about it in the paper months later. Muni said they had completely contained the spill, but that didn’t address the air quality impact. I called CalEPA about Muni’s failure to post a Proposition 65 warning and never received a response. I’ve only been here five years, but I’ve wanted to get a blood toxin sample done. They look at heavy metals in the blood,” said Walther. Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, requires businesses to notify Californians about significant amounts of chemicals in the products they purchase, in their homes or workplaces, or that are released into the environment.    

Walther’s home has double-paned windows facing Caltrain’s tracks. “Anytime during the week, Caltrain makes the outside of the building uninhabitable. The train comes every ten minutes during rush hour. We’ve got a nice deck but there’s a backyard that’s unusable.” Walther and his wife, who is herself a commuter, were lucky to move into a house that was built only ten years ago, and features soundproof windows and walls. Their neighbors aren’t as fortunate. They live in a century-old brick building without insulation or double-paned windows. The neighbors recently cut-down two fruit trees because they believed that the fruit, which had an omnipresent layer of black dust, was inedible. In a creative attempt to improve ambient air quality conditions, Walther is ordering pollution-absorbing Dendrocalamus Asper bamboo from Los Angeles, in hopes that it will grow tall enough to surround their CalTrain-facing patio on the second floor.

But to many commuters, proximity to freeways, Caltrain, and Muni lines are a desirable feature and a deciding factor in their decision to buy into a given complex. Only a block from Walther’s house is one of several new condominium developments catering, in part, to commuters.  Esprit Park has 142 units on offer, ranging in price from roughly $700,000 to more than $1 million. The Build Inc. development consists of a newly constructed building – which is encircled by the 20th Street bridge, 280 freeway, and Caltrain station – and a 19th century brick wine cellar whose interior has been revamped.  A third-story resident in the new building could practically reach out and touch a car driving on the bridge’s right-hand lane. Tucked between concrete roadways, the view is not of the Bay, but of cars speeding by. The City’s new pollution mitigation law doesn’t apply to the development, since Esprit construction began three years ago.

Despite the lull in the housing market, freeway condominiums are steadily selling. According to Daire Heneghan of Palisade Builders, the condominiums being built along the Bayview, Dogpatch, and Mission Bay waterfront raise land values tremendously.  To maximize profit, a developer can pay an in-lieu fee to remove its requirement of providing affordable housing units.

 “Why not address the source of the pollution rather than going at it backwards, posing mitigation for the developers?” Mark Walther asked.  Addressing pollution sources is what People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER) has been trying to do in the Excelsior neighborhood, which is also located adjacent to the 280 and 101 freeways.

“The new law does not change zoning,” said Charlie Sciamma, a PODER community organizer. Like Dogpatch, Mission Bay, and Potrero Hill, parts of the Excelsior are zoned as production, distribution, and repair (PDR) status, a designation given to the most industrially concentrated areas, where residential use isn’t recommended.  “Most Core PDR activities are incompatible with most other uses due to noise, heavy truck traffic, and volatile emissions,” explains the San Francisco Planning Department on its website.   “It’s tricky here because there’s such a need for housing and so few opportunities for developing because of limited land,” said Sciamma.

In 2008, a joint study sponsored by PODER and the Public Health Department found 17 diesel pollution hot spots in the Excelsior.  The findings prompted the nonprofit and the Chinese Progressive Association to collaborate with the Municipal Transportation Authority (MTA) and San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution last November calling for an MTA plan to reduce diesel truck pollution in residential neighborhoods by devising and enforcing better truck routes and upgrading grossly polluting vehicles to cleaner fuel.

“We’ve considered raising kids here,” said Walther. “The house has a lot of room inside for kids, but there’s no real outdoor play area because of the noise and air pollution.” Walther believes he got a good deal on rent for moving into an industrial neighborhood. But right next door, expensive new condos demonstrate that, at least according to the market, pollution is a small price to pay for convenience.  As long as you have double-paned windows, thick walls, a good sound system, and a flat-screen television.

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