Bay Youth for the Environment

In 1977, Bayview Hunters Point became the home of California’s first urban state park: Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. Although local residents fought to protect this area for public use by future generations, the park has not escaped the industrial pollution that plagues the entire community. Once-thriving wetlands, wildlife, and fisheries have been severely damaged due to landfill, soil erosion, industrial contamination, wastewater overflows, and illegal dumping.

In 2004, LEJ launched Bay Youth for the Environment (BYE) as a partnership with the California State Parks Foundation and California State Parks. BYE gives up to 12 youth from Bayview Hunters Point the opportunity to get involved with a landmark restoration project in the largest contiguous wetlands area in San Francisco.

BYE youth are collecting native plant seeds and growing the estimated 10,000 plants needed for native grass restoration and re-vegetation at Candlestick. As the work on the Yosemite Slough Restoration Project at Candlestick moves from remediation to restoration, the ground is being prepared for thousands of seedlings to be outplanted.

In addition, the Candlestick nursery supplies plantstock to LEJ’s restoration project at Heron’s Head Park, a 23-acre shoreline wetland we are stewarding on behalf of the Port of San Francisco, and to Pier 94, an India Basin wetland site stewarded by the Golden Gate Audubon Society.

For the youth, the nursery provides a quiet, steady, and settling space in the context of a hectic and often negative environment. The BYE interns do regular community outreach for the program and they advocate for urban parks in public gatherings and in meetings with policymakers in San Francisco and Sacramento.

The nursery draws hundreds of volunteers each year from all over San Francisco, dispelling negative stereotypes about the Bayview and giving LEJ Youth pride in their knowledge and leadership skills as they direct teams of adults in service projects.

The native plants nursery at Candlestick shares space with a 7,500-square-foot community garden; with the support of Hands On Bay Area and other service organizations, the LEJ Youth repaired the planting beds and set up the native plant nursery. All the garden plots are now reserved by community members who are using them to grow fresh food for home consumption. The youth and volunteers have transformed the garden’s whole look, adding sitting areas, a drinking fountain, a community gathering/BBQ area, a 200-square-foot head house–propagation workspace, planting fruit trees and ornamentals, and setting up a communal compost system.

For more information on Bay Youth for the Environment, contact Patrick Rump.

Heron's Head Park

In the past 100 years, approximately 90% of the San Francisco Bay's tidal wetlands have disappeared due to the advance of development and the creation of built environments through landfill.

Heron's Head Park (formerly known as Pier 98) is a 23-acre restored wetland owned by the Port of San Francisco and located at the base of the former PG&E Hunters Point Power Plant. Once open water, Pier 98 was initially created as a Bay-fill project to be used as a shipping terminal. The project never materialized beyond filling in the Bay, and Pier 98 turned into an abandoned brownfield site for several decades.

Meanwhile, nature took its course, and the landfill became critical habitat for more than 100 species of mostly migratory birds along the Pacific flyway and a variety of native and invasive plants — a hidden ecological treasure buried at the foot of the power plant, amongst forests of pampas grass, fennel, and California natives. In the early 90's, the resulting salt marsh had become one of only two remaining wetland habitats in the city and county of San Francisco.

During the mid-90's, the Port of San Francisco began a collaborative process to redevelop Pier 98. Local residents and teachers advocated for transforming the area into a park as a means to provide open space for the surrounding under-served communities. Many teachers expressed the need for a safe environmental education space for their classes, similar to those in the wealthier Presidio. Among the advocates was a newborn environmental justice education organization called Literacy for Environmental Justice. It was decided that Pier 98 would become Heron's Head Park, and since 1999 LEJ has managed community stewardship and environmental education programs at the site on behalf of the Port.

Thanks to the efforts of thousands of student and community volunteers, Heron's Head Park is now one of the most vibrant wetlands on the Bay. More than 1,200 student volunteers serve as primary caretakers of the park each year — planting natives, weeding out invasives, and cleaning and maintaining the wild areas of the park.

At the park, LEJ provides free, hands-on K-12 environmental educational programs year-round. Our programs draw concrete linkages between human health, the environment, and urban quality of life. Although we concentrate resources on our underserved SFUSD District 10 neighborhood, our programs are available to all schools and youth groups.

We begin with a classroom visit, followed by a park tour, stewardship action project, and final evaluation. Direct experiences with nature are the most successful means to engage young learners with the living systems that support our existence, making the experience of the outdoors integral to their lives. We help students bridge the gap between urban and natural environments through water and soil testing, migratory bird and native plant surveying, wetland ecology, weeding and planting, and how these all connect to the principles of environmental justice.

In the coming year, we will take our Heron's Head Park programs to a new level with the opening of the EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park, the first environmental education center south of Market Street and San Francisco's first 100% off-grid building. Every feature of the 1,500-square-foot facility will be designed as a teaching tool about green building and sustainability.

If you are an educator and would like to schedule a Heron's Head Park program for your class or youth group, please visit our For Educators page.

For more information about our Heron’s Head Park Program, contact Myla Ablog.

Map of Heron's Head Park: Click for Map