Lately in the bay area I've been particularly excited to pay for my bags at different grocery stores and finally (yes late to the party) have become diligent in bringing my own. I'd like to thank Save the Bay for their long relentless fight against needless trash and their support of bag bans far and wide. Thank You Save the Bay! PS, I am a proud Bay Swimmer and feel safer due to STB's great work.
The conservation committee of our garden club was appalled that the Redwood City Council is seriously considering pursuing the Cargill/DMB plan to build a new city in the salt flats in an area that could be restored to tidal marsh. Beginning in October 2009, a Save the Bay representative gave our group a background slide presentation and since then has helped us develop a coordinated strategy for raising public awareness about the project drawbacks. The strategy entails writing letters to newspaper editors, speaking at city council meetings, and working with members of other conservation organizations. Save the Bay has supplied points to include in letters, web links to papers' editorial pages, dates of council meetings, introductions to other conservationists, and a ton of day-to-day support. We are delighted and impressed with Save the Bay's commitment and support.
I recently learned that BCDC was proposing new laws for combatting sea level rise in the bay and I was interested in learning more about it. I called Save the Bay and they provided me with the entire 26 page proposed regulation which helped me learn about the issue. Save the Bay is a font of information on all sorts of issues involving the health of the Bay. The recent PBS Documentary about the history of the Bay and the history of Save the Bay shows the important work Save the Bay has undertaken over the last 40 years.
I've lived and worked in the Bay Area for 5 years and though its not my direct field of work, I really value what a lot of the innovative non-profits are doing. Save The Bay stands out in terms of raising the broader public's awareness of issues that really matter, or should matter, to them. Two items come to mind. The first was their incredible ad campaign of the last couple of years, where ads with funny captions (e.g. "they don't do it to you") show humans covered in oil dumped by sharks or the like. Genius. These ads were all over BART cars and stations, and they got a lot of people talking. The second is their amazing advocacy on the Redwood City Saltworks. This is an issue close to my heart because it is my field of work. A great development with a lot of financial backing has been proposed for a terrible location. They are fighting goliath and winning. Save the Bay was founded to fight Bay fill, and this project proposes to develop on Bay fill under suspicious environmental claims. Save the Bay has pointed out the inherent contradictions in this mega-development's plans, and organized over a hundred local politicians against it. They've done extensive public education and raised this issue to a level where the public knows about it and knows what's wrong with it. Save The Bay has been doing an incredible job of educating the public about critical issues affecting the Bay that defines this beautiful place where we live.