A year ago, Bay Nature launched a reporting project that we’ve dubbed “Wild Billions” to follow federal money flowing into the greater Bay Area for nature-based projects. No doubt you’ve noticed our flashy project logo. As of May 2024, roughly $1.2 billion has been allocated through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to the slice of projects we’re following. And with Bay Nature’s summer issue, we will have reported about the money in 19 stories, all of which can be read online.
When Bay Nature’s digital editor, Kate Golden, and I reported last year on the challenges of spending the rush of federal funds, we spoke with Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg, who is deeply involved in Bay conservation and is vice chair of the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture. She made a point that stuck with us. “A lot of our conservation projects are intertwined with other social issues like housing affordability. The funds that are there for strictly conservation can’t be used to deal with the other social issues that are standing in the way of implementing conservation.”
Based on that conversation, we began reporting on a $2.8 million grant from the EPA, made possible through BIL, for eelgrass restoration in Marin County’s Richardson Bay where an impoverished anchor-out community has lived for decades. In addition to receiving the EPA money, the Richardson Bay Regional Agency secured a $3 million matching state grant for housing roughly three dozen of the anchor-outs. We didn’t know where the reporting would lead us, but as Bay Nature reporter Anushuya Thapa asked basic questions, the complexity of the story grew.
The result is “In the Name of Eelgrass,” an in-depth and nuanced exploration of eelgrass ecology and conservation, living in poverty on the water, and, importantly, how environmental groups and the cities surrounding Richardson Bay achieved their goals.
This was a difficult story to report and to publish. But we dug in because other media outlets haven’t. And while Bay Nature is first and foremost an environmental science magazine, we know many of our readers care deeply about inequality in the region and housing affordability. A community that champions and identifies itself with the environment, like Bay Nature readers, deserves a full picture of how conservation and homelessness can clash in the Bay Area.
