A Lot To Say!

East Bay Real Estate: Earth Day – 40th Anniversary!

Who could imagine 40 years ago that the idea of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson’s “environmental teach-in” had it’s beginning in a few key communities, including the Bay Area.  After decades of focusing our world’s awareness about environmental issues that ALL of us experience each day, has now created a modern 21^st century world that understands how we treat our environment is not a dress rehearsal.

An example of how the Bay Area has lead the way from the very beginning of this movement is Save The Bay. Save The Bay was founded in 1961, as “Save San Francisco Bay Association” by three East Bay women who were watching the Bay disappear before their eyes.  Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick set out to stop the City of Berkeley’s plan to double in size by filling in the shallow Bay off-shore. They mobilized thousands of members to stop the project, and their resounding victory was repeated on Bay fill projects around the region.

This first modern grassroots environmental movement in the Bay Area won a revolutionary change – tens of thousands of Save The Bay members forced the State of California to acknowledge that the Bay belonged to the public. Save The Bay won a legislative moratorium against placing fill in the Bay in 1965, the McAteer-Petris Act. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) was established by the State to plan protection of the Bay, regulate shoreline development, and ensure public access, which at the time was almost non-existent.  (Check out the State Of The Planet report from the United Nations to get an even better awareness of the importance of Earth Day.) Read more