(Re)Discovering China Basin

A big story happened in my neighborhood along with last weekend's big storm; the ruptured water main on Division and 10th showed once again the nature of the shaky ground that makes up the landfill area near Mission Channel. I went to take some pictures and found Michael Carlin of the PUC supervising repairs to the "sinkhole." I asked Carlin whether the heavy rain had contributed to the rupture but he said that the age of the pipe was the main factor in the break. Other theorists cited the temperature of the water as a factor(3).

Some pictures of the old pavement tell a different story: a long crack in the asphalt with grass growing in it showed that the ground beneath the pavement had been sinking for some time previous to the break (pictures here soon). Given the intersection's location along the old creekbed, it seems more ikely that the heavy rains undermined the massive old pipes, causing them to shift and burst.

I wanted to go there Saturday night when I found the story online, but I was fighting off the flu, besides, I would have needed a rubber raft to get near the place. But I could really picture the whole scene and imagined what might happen if things got out of hand. I pictured the old creek coming to life again and the deep magic washing the whole Mission Bay neighborhood into the sea, just like when Narnia awoke in the famous book and all the bridges fell and the animals started talking again.

But back to reality:


When I took the China Basin beat this semester, I honestly wasn't sure what part of town it was, but I vaguely recalled from long ago that it was a gritty, dangerous area. What I found out about the Basin involved numerous and long-standing factors that combine to contribute to the area's hazardous character. The Basin is a waterfront area taken from the natives and created out of tideland marshes by speculators and industrialists in the Gold Rush era. Mission Creek was, and still is to some extent, polluted both by raw human sewage and offal from creekside slaughterhouses. One houseboat resident told me the Channel was a de facto military base during WWII when navy vessels docked there.

I learned that in essence, although the view is nice from the north side of the channel, the southern landfill side is essentially a demilitarised zone and a hotly disputed conversation piece for a myriad of local agencies and planning commissions lobbying for their projects and plans regarding the area. Even Francisco Da Costa, a local environmental expert whom I've often quoted as an impartial source, has recently been accused of making racist remarks (1); he also promotes the creation of a self-sufficient black community in the area. Da Costa is Chief Executive Officer of the South East Sector Community Development Corporation, whose website states: "SESCDC seeks bring about a shift of consciousness from dependency to self-sufficiency among the people of depressed African-American communities and other similar minority communities" (2). As noble a goal as this may be, it addresses long-standing social disparities between the area neighborhoods, and it seems that one of the main functions of the China Basin industrial area is to exist as a sort of buffer zone between SOMA and Bayview residents, whether intentionally or not.

Sources:

1.
Heather Knight - SF Chronicle, March 19, 2008
Francisco Da Costa Gets The Outster From Chris Daly in SF
http://zennie2005.blogspot.com/2008/03/francisco-da-costa-gets-outster-from.html

2.
http://www.sescdc.org/about_us

3.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=7170988

See also
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7169039