The Burlingame Voice

Fall 2022 Treehugger Post

I try to stick to B'game and our trees for the Spring and Fall treehugger posts like last year that you can find here.  But this time around, a stunning pair of brilliant trees in the Baywood section of San Mateo just stopped me in my tracks.  They are near the famous Baywood tree that the neighborhood is named after.  Even a native New Englander was taken by these gorgeous examples.

Commissioners' dinner returns

Another pre-Covid Burlingame tradition made its return last night when the annual Council-Commissioners' Dinner was emcee'd in person by mayor Ricardo Ortiz and city manager Lisa Goldman.  This has been a fun event for decades offering the opportunity to get to know new commissioners from the various city bodies and, most importantly, to recognize outgoing staff, councilmembers and commissioners.  It's a small thank you for their service.  Past councilmembers (and their partners) get to tag along, too.

The agenda is a short intro from the mayor which Ricardo delivered.  He focused on the hope that we can accommodate growth without losing the charm and livability that we all enjoy...or enjoyed.  It's a hope that is going to take some hard work to achieve given the pressures from Sacramento and the economy.  Then each commission chair introduces their colleagues and recognizes anyone leaving the commission.  Notable departures mentioned last night came from the Planning Commission--long timer Richard Terrones and William Loftus.  We also heard from the Measure I Oversight committee chair, Mary Hockeridge, and the Storm Drain Oversight committee chair, Eric Klein.  It was fun learning that Rena Gilligan has taken over for Joe Galligan as our representative on the San Mateo Mosquito & Vector Control District.

The two biggest bits of recognition came for outgoing city arborist, Bob Disco, and outgoing councilmember Ann O'Brien Keighran who both got resounding rounds of applause.  Bob's been a popular caretaker in this City of Trees for years and is retiring.  Ann's tenure on the Planning Commission and City Council will get a full recognition at the December 19th council rotation which is scheduled to also happen live in council chambers.  Here's Ricardo Ortiz at the mic.

B'game better than "Climate best by government test"

If you grew up with oppressive summer heat and humidity like I did, you really appreciate how nice the weather is in B'game.  Yesterday was a perfect example.  It was on the verge of being uncomfortably hot and a bit humid here.  High temperature was 88.  But down in Redwood City, with its motto "Climate best by government test", their temperature topped out at 100 degrees.  Yuck.

And the Chronicle noted "Livermore recorded 102 degrees Tuesday afternoon, according the National Weather Service. Fairfield reached 105 degrees, and Vacaville hit 102 degrees."  Double yuck.  I haven't seen any reports of brownouts yesterday, but we aren't done yet.  When the "Burlingame For All" people reappear, remember why people pay extra to live here and why it's worth it.

It is also time for the annual summer check-up on my ancient pear tree.  The yield goes back and forth year-to-year like last year.   The year before was a low yield too, but we had good harvests the two prior years.  This year I count eight, but they are already big and beautiful, so now we try to outwit the squirrels by letting them ripen, but not too much.

El Camino is "fixed"; who knew?

I enjoyed getting submissions from Voice readers--keep 'em coming please.  This one was particularly entertaining (at first) and then triggered the usual who-are-they-kidding response.

Who knew?  The "concern has been addressed" so no one will lose anymore teeth on ECR.  I guess that also means we do not need to cut down all the trees along the state highway and eventually replace them with 24" box trees.  Good to know.

Worrying About Wildfire (Up the Hill)

Yesterday was the longest day of the year and it was especially long if you lived in the Emerald Hills section of Redwood City or the surrounding parts of Woodside.  In addition to the County text alert, I got a couple of texts from friends who were under evacuation orders that didn't last too long, but according to the DJ piece, the fire was not contained last night:

The seven-alarm Edgewood Fire in the hills of San Mateo County is at 25 acres and was not contained as of Tuesday evening, according to a spokesperson for Cal Fire.  There was one injury to a firefighter and no structures were damaged. A Pacific Gas and Electric substation was threatened and had units on it to ensure fire stayed away from it, Cal Fire CZU Deputy Chief Jonathan Cox said.  Large swaths of San Mateo County were out of power due to a downed PG&E transmission line, the utility said.

I've been worrying about this for sometime as I learn more about woodland management from my experience in Tahoe.  As a member of an HOA in Tahoe, we have put a good amount of time, effort and money into carving out a buffer zone.  Then I drive up Chateau Dr. or Black Mountain Rd in H'borough and I wonder what the Town of H'Borough is doing about all that fuel laying around on the ground.  It's pretty much everywhere you look.  Are we just one lightning strike or foolish act (or crazy arsonist) away from a real problem here "down the hill"?  It sure feels like it.

Download Emerald Hills fire_062122

This is a bit of video from the television coverage of the fire last night.  We will see if the link works.

Water restrictions move to Stage 2

Here's the latest addition to the I Told You So file.  B'game is joining the movement to Stage 2 water restrictions while simultaneously approving ever more new construction--residential and commercial.  The DJ reports that

The City Council adopted the restrictions following a call from state water regulators for local suppliers to enact plans preparing for impending water shortages.  The rules, effective June 10, prohibit “residential and commercial landscapes” from being watered more than two days per week, and between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Washing vehicles is also banned, except for with recycled water.

I'm not sure where you are going to get "recycled water" with enough pressure behind it to actually wash a car, but good luck.  Here's the big red flag for future restrictions

Meanwhile, Hetch Hetchy, the reservoir that supplies water to 2.7 million people in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and San Mateo counties, is expected to be full heading into the dry season next year despite below-average snowpack levels, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the agency that owns and operates the system. The question is how much of the water will be available, as negotiations continue that could partially divert it to ecosystems and fisheries in the Bay-Delta, among other uses.

Burlingame Public Works Director Syed Murtuza noted “There will be a lot of staff time dedicated to this effort to conduct inspection, do outreach and respond to complaints.”

It might be good to come up with an answer to the question "Why are we building all this new 'stuff'?" as staff conducts inspections and does outreach.  And we probably should understand why we are going to underwater our trees when the city Urban Water Management Plan tells us there isn't going to be much of a problem even in a five-year drought.

June 17 update.  You probably got a postcard from the city yesterday about the annual water quality report:  www.burlingame.org/waterquality.  Did you notice the license plate on the sweet '68 Camaro?  SAVEH2O   LOL.

Spring treehugger post: Another Japanese maple

I just can't help admiring our Japanese maples every spring.  There are other lovely trees blooming--cherries especially and my apple and pear trees are just starting, but the Japanese maples are the best.  Notice this one has three colors at once--it sprouts in green then quickly transitions through yellow to red depending on which leaves get the most sun first.

The End of a Sad Story

Back when it happened, I consciously did not post about the terrible fallen-tree accident in Washington Park that took a woman's life and seriously injured two other people.  It was tragic and probably avoidable offering a severe lesson learned one hopes.  Now that the Daily Journal is reporting a final settlement, it merits a post for the historical record--such as it is.  Here is just a snippet of the article for the record

City Manager Lisa Goldman said the city’s insurance will cover $30 million of the initial claim with another $2.5 million coming from the city’s internal insurance fund. Burlingame’s budget for the current fiscal year is $117.7 million.

The city hired an independent arborist last year to provide tree inspection and maintenance services in addition to the city’s own program, Goldman said. Burlingame’s Park and Recreation Department oversees the maintenance of tens of thousands of trees citywide.

I took a photo back when it happened and that drives home the magnitude of the branch.  The end of a sad story all around.

Planting Trees: Official and Guerilla-style

The SF Comicle actually provided some value yesterday with a lengthy piece about a guerilla-style oak tree advocate in Oakland.  Here are a couple of good excerpts

Not long after a storm, Tim Vendlinski can be found in parks or small patches of grass around Oakland with a shovel and a few dozen acorns or oak seedlings in hand. He grabs his gardening tools from the trunk of his car, and with the swiftness of someone who has planted thousands of oaks in his life, he gets to work.  “How can you have a city named Oakland that doesn’t have any freaking oaks in it?” Vendlinski said.  His efforts represent a vigilante approach to urban forestry — a form of guerrilla gardening that is often at odds with the policies and standards of the city of Oakland’s tree supervisors. Both recognize the value of oaks, but they don’t always agree on where the oaks should go or how they should be maintained.

Oak trees are particularly important features of both urban and rural landscapes for several reasons, said Angela Moskow, an information network manager with California Oaks, a California Wildlife Foundation project focused on preserving the state’s oak trees.  Oaks foster enormous biodiversity — perhaps more than any other tree variety in California, sustaining more than 100 species of mammals, 170 species of birds and 4,000 species of insects, according to California Oaks.  Oaks are particularly good at sequestering carbon, both from the air and the ground.

I know the coastal live oak in my front yard has grown from 4' tall to 40' in the last 30 years and feeds a LOT of squirrels.

Oakland’s master street tree list, the list of trees approved to be planted on city sidewalks and medians, includes 59 tree species. Of those, eight are oaks. Only four of the trees on the list are native to Oakland, Vendlinski said, calling the list “horrific.”

Which leads me to back to B'game.  The city newsletter noted that

The Parks Division is in the process of planting 162 City trees throughout Burlingame in planter strip areas, tree lawns, and parks. The species of trees being planted will include red maples, eucalyptus Citriodoras, Chinese flame trees, crepe myrtles (Tuscarora), magnolia (Little Gem and Samuel Sommers), elms (Pioneer and Accolade), sycamores, Chinese pistaches, and Trident maples. This is the last of three plantings that will happen this year.

We got four of the 162 newbies on my street this week and I love them.  If you are interested in the "politics of trees" click through and read the whole article about what should go where, how it should or should not be watered, etc.  We live in a designated City of Trees regardless of whether SF wants to strangle our water supply or not. 

Water: One Man's Spigot is Another Man's.....Cesspool

There are days when I think the clowns at the San Francisco Comicle should pay me to read their fish wrap.  Once in a while the thought lasts a week.  This is one of those weeks.  The "editorial board" published a piece titled "S.F.'s spigot won't run forever".  That was in last Sunday's print edition.  The online version I just linked to was titled "Don’t let a few ‘monster’ storms fool you, S.F.’s water supply is unsustainable".  You think hey, maybe the public opinion polls, La Nina, the water measurements, the grotesque over-development or the warnings from Newsom might have sunk in?  Nope.  Didn't happen.  Here's what they said

On Oct. 20, state environmental officials sent an ominous letter to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which supplies drinking water to the city and nearly 2 million other Bay Area residents. It read in part:  “Proposed voluntary actions by water agencies on the San Joaquin River tributaries have fallen short of needed flow and habitat improvements, and viable proposals are not being offered at this time.”

What does that mean in layman’s terms?  It means Bay Area water users are unsustainably and likely unlawfully draining the sources of our supply — and killing the habitats and wildlife that rely on those sources. And we don’t have a workable plan to fix it.

For decades, San Francisco and the Bay Area have enjoyed one of the cleanest and most reliable water supplies in the country, 85% of which comes from Hetch Hetchy. But we’ve taken that resource for granted. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is decades behind other California water agencies in building alternative and sustainable new water infrastructure.

You have to love the unsubstantiated use of "unlawfully".  But what to do about this impending disaster that the Comicle has just discovered?  Well?  Let's get the new SFPUC general manager--a long-time EssEff insider, Dennis Herrera-- to force the Peninsula under its thumb.  How?  Let's start with Green Envy

San Franciscans are known for being sparing with our own water usage. But many of the nearly 2 million other Bay Area residents that use Hetch Hetchy water to are not nearly as parsimonious in their usage as we are.  San Francisco should not be complicit in the extinction of several aquatic species so that Peninsula homeowners can keep their lawns green.

The same fishwrap that whines about how many Sequoias were burned in the wildfires thinks we mere Peninsulans should let our lawns die--not realizing the trees live on the lawns and drink the same irrigation.  I know, it's complicated for someone who spends their day stepping over discarded hypodermic needles and broken glass.  But wait, there's more.  The "toilet to tap" trope rolls out with a new twist.  We get to be the City's septic tank:

Water recycling for potable use presents technical and legal challenges. It generally demands pumping treated sewage into the ground, pulling it out and treating it again before delivering it to customers. The Peninsula has storage capacity for this that San Francisco largely lacks.  Demanding better water conservation from neighbors while partnering on sustainable projects will be a tough needle to thread. Thankfully, Herrera has signaled that he’s up to the challenge. San Francisco residents need him to mean it.

I love that "neighbors" part.  With neighbors like EssEff we should all be getting Dobermans and an extra lock.  With what else they are exporting we should all be getting an extra lock anyway.  SF can build luxury senior living penthouses that rent for $324,000 a year with rooftop pools, but the poop should be filtered on the Peninsula.  You should read the rest of the EssEff BeeEss in the editorial--I don't have the heart to quote all of the "outflow".