April 7, 2007
Mayor
Gavin Newsom
City
Hall, Room 200
1 Dr.
Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San
Francisco, California 94102
Sean
Elsbernd, Supervisor
San
Francisco Board of Supervisors
City
Hall, Room 244
1 Dr.
Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San
Francisco, California 94102
Dear Mayor
Newsom and Supervisor Elsbernd:
Your
offices assisted Lakewood Tenants Association and others in our efforts to
clean up the southern end of John Muir Drive a couple of years ago by
establishing new parking restrictions that successfully resulted in the
elimination of the then already illegal parking of heavy trucks and campers.
Now the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is undermining all of
our efforts by permitting a contractor, working on a project being performed in
another area of the city (the "East-West Water Transmission Line Installation
Project"), to store materials and equipment on the street and over
unprotected soils in that same area. We strongly object and request your
intervention.
As
the attached photographs show, which were taken about 5:20 pm Friday, April 6th,
PUC's contractor is parking heavy truck trailers on the street in a tow zone.
Permitting this violation of law will simply encourage the previous scofflaws
to return and park their heavy trucks in the same area and enforcement will
become difficult or impossible because the Department of Parking and Traffic
will not be able to identify which trucks/trailers belong to the City's
contractor and which do not. The photographs also show the gates to the off-street
storage area open and unsecured despite the fact that there were no City or
contractor employees present to maintain security. In fact, we found the gates
to still be in the same wide open position at 12:45 am the following morning.
Failure to secure the gates will encourage the previous scofflaws again to park
their rigs alongside the contractor's equipment in the off-street area.
We
believe that PUC should be required to find some other more appropriate area to
store materials and equipment. If that cannot be accomplished, we believe that,
at the least, the violations of the tow zone should cease and a temporary
concrete pad draining into an enclosed sump vessel covered with a temporary
building should be constructed to shelter all trucks, motorized equipment and
hazardous fluid containers, such as drums of oils and solvents, to prevent the
inevitable leakage of hazardous waste fluids irretrievably into the soils
surrounding Lake Merced. (Construction machinery is notorious for leaking of
motor oils, hydraulic oils and grease.) A building over such a pad is necessary
or rain will overflow the sump and enlarge the volume of wastes to be disposed
of. We note that such a temporary building was constructed in Golden Gate Park
and later removed several years ago for the rainwater recycling project even
though the equipment for that project was not stored adjacent to a water body
that may be drawn upon as a potable water supply in an emergency and that is
continuously utilized for recreational purposes and as a fishery.
Lakewood
Tenants Association is a member of the Lake Merced Task Force (LMTF) but this
letter does not necessarily represent the position of other members of LMTF.
Sincerely,
Mona
Cereghino, President
Ross
C. Wilkinson, Vice-president
cc:
Members, Lake Merced Task Force
Photo
1: Storage Trailers (two) Parked in Tow Zone Southern End of John Muir Drive
Photo
2: Fenced Area Left Unsecured As Shown Overnight April 6/7, 2007