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The Trail Companion
Winter 2001
A Brief History of Bay Area Parks and Open
Spaces
Part 2. From the 1960s through the Present
Day
...continued.
Meanwhile, some work
towards protecting diked wetlands went forward. In
1974, as a first step, the state legislature passed
the Suisun Marsh Preservation Act advocated by Save
the Bay, and three years later a follow-up Suisun
Marsh Protection Plan was passed.
Conservation Spreads to the Coast
The fight for the bay convinced conservationists
that a similar approach could help address wider
environmental concerns. In November, 1972 the state's
voters approved Proposition 20, the California
Coastal Zone Conservation Act, to protect the state's
coastline. It established a state coastal commission
and several regional coastal commissions, all
patterned after the BCDC. Each commission was to pass
on all development proposals and prepare a coastal
plan for the area under its authority by the end of
1975. Two commissions had responsibility for the bay
area; the North Central Coast Regional Commission,
covering Sonoma, Marin and San Francisco counties,
and the Central Coast Regional Commission,
encompassing San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Monterey
counties. Proponents formed the Coastal Alliance to
monitor the new agencies and defend the law's
provisions, the same watchdog role the Save San
Francisco Bay Association played in relation to the
bay commission. The original coastal act terminated
in 1976, but the next year a new act continued the
state commission indefinitely and the regional ones
through Jun. 30 1979. The state legislature again
extended the life of the regional commissions in
1978, to mid-1981. Thereafter coastal cities and
counties were to take over planning and regulation,
subject to overview of the state commission, once the
state commission had approved their local coastal
plans.
While neither the bay
nor the coastal commissions played a direct role in
setting aside open space, by limiting development to
conserve natural resources they did much to create an
environment in which such solutions could occur, as
well as ensuring that open space would still be there
for later preservation.
The Regional Parks Movement
New interest in public lands had been building
well before the crisis of the baylands focused public
attention on the need to conserve coastal lands and
waters. Even in the 1950s the East Bay Regional Park
District had found support for growth, with the
Hayward area joining the district in 1956 and Fremont
in 1958. Also in 1958, Dorothy Eskine founded
Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks, an
alliance of people and organizations interested in
preserving open space and increasing areas for public
recreation. In 1960 it made a rough inventory of open
space then publicly owned, which was incorporated
into the California Public Outdoor Recreation Plan.
Soon it was urging the Association of Bay Area
Governments (ABAG) to develop a long-range regional
land use plan including proposals for parks and
agricultural greenbelts. Eskine's group assisted ABAG
staff in applying for federal planning assistance
funds and aided the effort by assembling information
from its constituent organizations on areas to add
for recreation or preserve as agricultural lands,
watersheds and marshlands. This information was
reflected in the open space portion of ABAG's
preliminary regional plan of 1966, which projected
setting aside 2,000,000 acres for a permanent
regional greenbelt. In 1968, taking their efforts a
step further, Citizens for Regional Recreation and
Parks called on the legislature to create a regional
open space agency, though the state proved cool to
this proposal. Meanwhile, ABAG went on to complete a
long range regional plan for the period 1970-1990.
Published in 1970, it included among its
recommendations keeping 3,400,000 acres (out of
4,500,000 in the Bay Area) permanently free of urban
encroachment.
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