San Francisco does an awful lot to accommodate its dogs. A hearing convened a decade ago to debate the plight of city mutts was, in the memory of several elected officials, the most well-attended government gathering they'd ever seen. "Not homeless policy, not tax policy, not public safety: dogs on-leash or off-leash," said one, still amazed all these years later.
So, again, this city is accommodating its dogs. But is it ready to accommodate what dogs, inevitably, leave behind?
During debate over the proposed 5M project, which could erect 1,200 or more residential units via a series of high-rises on the current SOMA site of the Chronicle building, the question of how to mitigate the influx of dogs — and their excrement — was broached. Planning Commissioner Mike Antonini was dismissive of this concern, leading to, perhaps, this city's first dogshit analysis.
"Commissioner Antonini's remark ... that dog waste 'is not worth evaluating in an [Environmental Impact Report]' could not have been more blind to real life environmental impacts of new development," reads the Nov. 21 letter to the Planning Commission from the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium. "Perhaps when he 'steps in it' someday he may reconsider."
What follows is a detailed prediction of how much dog waste may soon befoul SOMA depending upon three different development scenarios. Assuming 10 percent of residents in the forthcoming towers have dogs — "based on other typical large SOMA projects" per the letter — and figuring the average dog produces three-quarters of a pound of feces per day — an amount postulated by Dr. Stanley Coren in Psychology Today and confirmed to SF Weekly by animal care and control professionals as reasonable — neighborhood dwellers could be sidestepping between 10 and 16.5 tons of dogshit per year.
Charts were included.
Well, that sounds like an environmental impact of sorts. It is not, however, the sort of thing examined in an Environmental Impact Report. Viktoriya Wise, a deputy environmental review officer with the Planning Department, confirms that 17 "environmental factors" are addressed within a typical EIR; they range from "aesthetics" to "wind and shadow" to "noise." The "biological resources" section could, she says, be used to evaluate a project's impact on native species. It could not, in her estimation, apply to dogs or excrement or dog excrement. That's just not the kind of thing that's covered in an EIR. "In my experience, we have not specifically discussed in our environmental review reports issues around dog waste," she tells SF Weekly after being assured we weren't prank-calling her from a local radio station. "And I do not foresee it."
She did add, however, that the specter of 16.5 tons of feces inundating SOMA is "a legitimate concern."
And, on this at least, everyone can agree.
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