When San Francisco’s Department of the Environment was created in 1996, The City was a vastly different place.
It was a time when tech campuses dominated the skyline, and when threats to a warming world felt distant. It was a time when the word “sustainability” was so seldom used, it was deemed a term you’d have to “spell to people over the phone,” according to The City’s first environmental report.
The Department of Environment was given the task of implementing a pest management program and adopting greener building practices.
San Franciscans are already feeling the effects of climate changes as the heatwaves and summer wildfires engulf the state and set new temperature records in the winter. The department has been left to face a worsening global crisis, with little staff and limited financial support from City Hall.
“This is not just some extra, like-to-have department,” said Elena Engel of the environmental nonprofit 350 San Francisco. “This is part of The City.”
Last week, the Department of the Environment announced it would be requesting approximately $3.2 million from the General Fund — the first time it’s asked for such funding in nearly two decades. The money would be used for the staffing needed to implement The City’s Climate Action Plan, a roadmap to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 by decarbonizing buildings and transportation, and improving biodiversity.
While environmental groups are calling for millions more to be earmarked in climate action, any General Fund money will significantly increase the amount that the department has received historically.
“If we don’t fund climate, all of those other things (in The City’s budget) will be worse and require more money,” said Engel.
The request is also poised to test Mayor London Breed’s willingness to bolster San Francisco’s reputation as a climate leader with dollars and cents. San Francisco is regarded as one of the most green cities in the country, but it failed to fund the department that was supposed to protect residents and infrastructure from rising seas, worsening wildfires, and warmer temperatures.
Last year, the Department’s annual operating budget was $23 million. In contrast, the mayor had set aside more than a half a million dollars to help those who are homeless that year.
“It’s a bit of smoke and mirrors,” said Francesca Vietor, the former president of the first Commission on the Environment, a body established by the Board of Supervisors in 1993 and charged with advising The City on environmental priorities.
“San Francisco and the Bay Area are very progressive — I mean, we’re environmentalists,” Vietor said. But “when you start to look under the hood, it’s like, whoa, yes, woefully under-resourced, not doing the kinds of projects that we could be doing with the innovation and commitment that we have in the Bay.”
However, now is the time to fund climate policy. The mayor’s budget office expects a $108 million surplus of General Fund dollars over the next two budget years. A portion of that money, many say, should be allocated toward making progress on The City’s climate goals laid out late last year.
“We’re basically jumpstarting the mayor’s Climate Action Plan,” said Debbie Raphael, the Department of Environment’s director. “What we ultimately need to do is get off of fossil fuels in buildings, cars and trucks. That’s the bottom line. This money is going to help us.”
Be humble
In the late 1990s, voters created the Department of Environment. Initially Vietor called it an unfunded mandate. It was primarily responsible for public outreach and pest management.
“It was very small,” said Raphael. “The idea being it was a place for the public to come and weigh in on environmental issues.”
In 2000, the department had eight employees and expanded to include clean air and energy programs. A year later, it nearly tripled in size after it assumed responsibility for The City’s Solid Waste Management Program, which includes toxics reduction and recycling.
Today, the department employs more than 115 people and oversees a wide range of city operations, including climate change, zero waste and urban forestry. Despite its growing responsibility and reach, the department lost General Fund funding in 2003 after a budget crisis forced citywide cuts. It has managed to collect revenue through a mix of refuse fees, work orders, and grant funding.
“I always tell people it’s a bit of a blessing and a curse,” said Raphael. “The blessing is when the economy’s really bad, and general fund departments get hit hard, we don’t generally have those kinds of setbacks. The problem, and the curse, is that all our revenue has some kind of nexus. It has some sort of obligation associated with who’s giving it to us.”
Despite climate scientists continuing to project worsening megadroughts, and rapidly rising sea level, the department has been limited in its ability respond due to contractual, often temporary, limitations of work orders and grant funding.
The City has sometimes benefited from targeted funding streams. For example, nearly 40% of the department’s revenue comes from Recology’s refuse rates, fees generated by San Francisco’s three-bin waste collection system. The catch is the department can only apply that money toward related initiatives, which has shaped San Francisco’s leadership in the Zero Waste and composting space.
“No other city has that kind of a record,” said Engel. “That was where the money was coming from, so that’s where the money went.”
Funding shortage
But composting alone will not solve The City’s growing list of environmental issues. “It’s become increasingly challenging to get the work of The City done without a stable funding source,” said Raphael.
Yet, city leaders are expressing a sense of urgency. The General Fund granted $1 million to the department last year. It was requested by supervisors Rafael Mandelman (Gordon Mar) and Matt Haney (Matt Haney). This money was used to conduct a long-term cost analysis to assess the impacts of climate change and to establish a Climate Equity Hub to provide outreach and workforce training to support the transition to electric construction.
It’s a start, said Engel, but it’s not nearly enough. “In the end, we don’t have a choice. It’s just a question of how fast we move.”
Despite financial challenges, the department has a remarkable track record. The City is not only the leader in zero waste in the country, but it has also been an early adopter new technologies such as rooftop solar.
In 2019, San Francisco’s emissions dropped to 41% below 1990 levels, six years ahead of its initial goal, thanks in part to The City’s shift to cleaner grid-supplied electricity and programs like CleanPowerSF.
The Board of Supervisors and Mayor signed new and more aggressive emissions reductions targets into law last year. San Francisco must become carbon neutral by 2040. This means that the Department of Environment will need to work with other departments in order to significantly reduce or offset greenhouse gases emissions in the energy, transportation, and building sectors. This process has been criticised by activists as being opaque.
“Right now, what climate action we are taking across The City is hodgepodge and noncoordinated,” said Daniel Tahara of the San Francisco Climate Emergency Coalition. The City’s Climate Action Plan is supposed to be a citywide roadmap, he said, but no one is tracking results or outcomes.
Tahara remains optimistic that the recent funding request is a sign for much-needed momentum. “If it makes it in the mayor’s budget, we’re basically good. We don’t have to fight the fight at the board.”
The mayor’s office declined to weigh in on how much it will allocate to the Department of Environment at this stage. Jeff Cretan (a spokesperson for Mayor) stated that all city departments are currently preparing to submit proposals to budget office by Tuesday deadline.
“I’m under no illusion that $3.2 million is solving the climate crisis,” said Raphael. “This is an investment in a small city agency.” But, she acknowledged, any funding will be a meaningful step toward enacting real climate policy in San Francisco.
“If it’s just a plan on paper, then we’re wasting our breath,” said Raphael. “We need to see action, not words on a page.”
Lori Lambertson, an educator at the Exploratorium, teaches a group about King Tides as water flows onto Pier 14 on Saturday Dec. 4, 2021. (Jessica Wolfrom/The Examiner)
