Just The News

Sea Lion Rescued In Our Watershed

Did you catch the news?  Another wayward sea lion appeared next to the Nimitz Freeway this morning.  The sea lion was hurt, and swam away from the San Francisco Bay for a little rest and relaxation.

Fortunately this creature will likely be fine, and is now in the hands of the Marin-based Marine Mammal Center for ministrations.  He (or she) seems like a fighter, at least based on this rescue mission video:

Sea Lion Rescued, Sept 14, 2009

What an appropriate “billboard” for Creek-to-Bay Day.

As you know, there are creek watersheds running from the the Oakland Hills to the San Francisco Bay, and many Montclarions work tirelessly all year clearing brush and restoring these ecosystems.

On Creek-to-Bay Day, Oaklanders will arrive en masse at 23 city-wide locations.  This workday takes place on Saturday, September 19th, from 9am through noon.  Here are nearby spots for Montclarions,  in the hills:

  • Beaconsfield Canyon – 2639 Beaconfield Place
  • Butters Canyon – Butters Drive
  • Dimond Park – Scout Hut
  • Joaquin Miller Park Nursery – The Nursery
  • Marj Saunders Park – Chelton & Ascot Drive
  • Oakland Zoo – Main Entrance, Arroyo Viejo Creek Sign
  • Shepherd Canyon Park – Escher Meadow

This time of year, everything should be pretty dry in the watersheds and perfect for toiling away.  With humans’ sweat equity, the native plants and animals are reappearing where they belong – as evidenced by this slightly confused sea lion, who decided to swim along the Nimitz.

Evening Update: We just heard that the sea lion had been bitten by a shark, and wasn’t in very good health after all.  The Marine Mammal Center euthanized the lion a little while ago, RIP.

See The Bad Air, Summer Edition

While driving across the new Oakland Bay Bridge this morning, you could see the bad air settling across Oakland as well as San Francisco.  Welcome to an official Spare The Air Day, summer edition.

In the Five Day Forecast, notice the “55” projected air quality for the Coast and Central Bay area, which includes Oakland and the Oakland Hills.  We are experiencing moderate quality today, which means “unusually sensitive people should consider limiting prolonged outdoor exertion.”

Spare The Air Forecast - September, 2009

So we are relative safe for now, at least from an overall public health perspective.  Pity the Santa Clara Valley southerners, whose orange “101” translates into a full-on alert to sensitive groups.

Yet the numbers themselves don’t begin to describe how the smog looks as it settles on the land.  It looks quite terrible, when gazing across the vistas from the Bay Bridge.  We can count our blessings that the sky and vistas are still visible, right?

For the record, there have been ten officially-declared Spare The Air Days so far this year and 13 days through all of last year.  Over time, the Bay Area has registered increases in its ozone box scores – so there’s no reason to feel complacent about our fossil fuel contributions.

We have no aspirations to join Los Angelenos!

September 26th Update: We are up to 13 officially-declared Spare The Air Days so far this year!  The area quality is going back to green, which means no health effects, starting tomorrow.

Bay Bridge Dowager Shows Her Age

We’ve been spellbound by the Oakland Bay Bridge construction this weekend, and the bridge is definitely showing her age.  During the full-bridge inspection of the Eastern Span, Caltrans engineers discovered an I-Bar crack, and are running at warp speed to fix this support structure problem.

Caltrans Morning Briefing

Mike Fornier, Caltrans principal construction engineer, explained “the crack we discovered is significant, it’s visual from the ground, and it’s about 100 feet in the air.”  There are eight I-Bars, so the other seven have taken up the load but still…this is a serious problem.

The 73-year-old piece has rusted out and must be fixed right now.  The crack is far away from the current bridge bypass and is thoroughly unrelated to this bypass construction.  Caltrans believes the crack developed during the past few months, but could have been related to original weaknesses in the metal.

This morning, we all learned the bridge would have been closed to fix this problem alone!  Of course, the engineering cognoscenti got to work immediately:  a design plan was developed; materials were ordered; and parts are now getting fabricated.  Engineers are awaiting deliveries, and a 10-man crew is ready to make the repairs.

Yes, Caltrans is committed to completing this as quickly as possible.  But we can’t help but think this sounds like one of those TV design shows with a deadline.  Will this get fixed by Tuesday morning at 5am?  In this case, fixing it matters more than making it pretty in time.

P.S.  The good news is the Oakland Bay Bridge bypass has been successful, and final joints are getting installed there.  “The 3600-ton segment was set down within a half-inch tolerance,” said Caltrans Spokesman Bart Ney, “right on the money.”

September 8th update: The bridge opened around 6:30am this morning, congrats to Caltrans.
October 27th update: The bridge closed again at 8:00pm, when part of the fix fell down (more here).

Goodbye To The Old Eastern Span

As planned and planned, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is closed for the next four days. The bridge that we took for our entire lives will be no more, as the detoured route will be in place starting Tuesday morning.

We captured a little history in the making, with the very last cars making their way on the old Eastern Span over to Yerba Buena Island.  Here are screenshots taken from 8pm through 9pm tonight.  You can see the last passenger cars, no traffic at all, construction vehicles arriving, and apparatus lighting up and settling in…below.

800 pm

815 pm

830 pm

900 pm

The weekend activities will be fascinating to behold, because of the sheer project scale:  the Oakland Bay Bridge undergoes its very own bypass surgery.  While the new section of bridge is a “temporary fix” for the next few years, this replacement takes a highly-orchestrated feat of engineering ingenuity.

Construction’s supposed to wrap up by the wee hours of Tuesday, and we are holding our collective breaths that the bypass succeeds.  Maybe the bridge karma is good right now, and this project will even finish up early like the smaller project two years ago.

In the meantime?  See what’s happening live at the Caltrans construction video, which works really well.  Also some of the local TV stations have nice video streams:  CBS5 video cam – KTVU2 video cam – ABC7 video cam – KRON4 video cams.

For any Oakland-to-San Francisco commuters, please feel free to share your war stories tomorrow.  We feel for you.  The rest of us will avoid that other city for now, thank you.

http://www.kron4.com/News/SpecialCoverage/BayBridgeClosureLaborDayWeekend2009/tabid/504/Default.aspx

What Does MOBN Mean?

MOBN is a brand-new Oakland acronym making the rounds, which stands for Make Oakland Better Now.  It’s no mystery about what MOBN seeks to do, though:   identify the key issues Oakland mayoral candidates should address next year.

Make Oakland Better Now

Oaklander Bruce Nye (in the left photo, above) came up with the idea, and organized a kick-off meeting last week.  He gathered some of his friends to wrangle opinionated meeting-goers.  There was surprisingly civil discourse, as the wranglers had no axes to grind and focused on gathering as many issues as possible.

At least 100+ people came to this evening meeting, held at St. Theresa’s Church in the hills.  There were bloggers, a couple city workers, a city council member, and concerned citizens who had read about the meeting online.  The first issue emerged instantly, namely to hold future gatherings a little closer to public transportation.

After we were told the rules, the crowd split into three groups covering public safety, public works and infrastructure, and accountability/budgeting.  In under two hours, the attendees had created a tsunami of important issues – and it was a very good beginning!

What’s kind of challenging?  Getting down to pointed issues that really could or should be addressed, or else we’ll be trying to solve world hunger.  On the other hand, if those great Bakesale Betty gingersnaps were distributed beyond this first meeting…hhmm.