World Environment Day (WED) Dog and Pony Shows.

I took a quick tour of the World Environment displays by San Francisco City Hall and was shocked at the very poor planning and lack of quality sustainable products and displays in front of City Hall. At one of the exhibits I met Jesse Blout the Director of Economic Development and Work Force and had a nice talk with him. We were in the Scrap House taking a self-guided tour. There was nothing much about this model house made of some discarded materials. Telephone books used as insulation. A local news media report estimated the model house to cost about $40,000 I would say not more then $5000. For sure this flimsy model did not meet the basic seismic standards. There were some Clean Energy cars on display but the models that are very expensive. I tried to talk to some of the display owners and asked them questions about sustainable practices in San Francisco. They had no knownledge about what I was talk ing about and told me in fact they were told to come at the last moment. I met a Green, Board of Supervisor and he told me that most of what I saw was not well planned and he and the other Supervisors were caught in the web linked to World Environment Day (WED) but as I mentioned in my articles before - it was more a Dog and Pony Show. The same response from some of my friends who attended a couple of events at the Yerba Buena Gardens. Very poor planning. I saw a couple of buses running on hydrogen - I do not know where they were going to - but they dropped four or five passengers each time they stopped at City Hall. I saw a diesel MUNI bus do the same but this time only two passengers got down at City Hall. Waste of money on transportation services that could be served by a small shuttle bus. I did not see the United Nations have a single stall - which took me by surprise. I know for sure the organizers did not get the United Nations involved in a timely manner. I met and spoke to some folks from other countries but they were here because their fare was paid and looked forward more to see sights in San Francisco as would any tourist - and were less interested in the events planned by San Francisco Environment (SFE) and the Mayor of San Francisco linked to WED. As I mentioned in my previous articles many Dog and Pony shows with nothing much of importance to attain. By any measure waste of money. In our back yard some still want to place 3 Combustion Turbines. The dead line to place Particulate Traps on MUNI diesel buses has passed and no one is doing anything about this. Our Bay is polluted and gets more polluted every single day and everyone knows that. The City of San Francisco has NO Housing Element and Transportation Document coming from the Planning Department and based on empirical data. Millions of gallons of water keep leaching into the ground from leaking clean drinking pipes and sewer pipes that are very old. The result our watershed is polluted. San Francisco keeps compromising on Quality of Life Issues. We have good people with the best intention trying to do good - but we have corrupt politicians the kind of Susan Leal, Gavin Newsom, Jared Blumenfelf and their cronies - that will not go away.

Francisco Da Costa
Director
Environmental Justice Advocacy