SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Hate them or love them, slow streets were first introduced in San Francisco at the beginning of the pandemic as a way get people outside while social distancing.

A portion of Sanchez street in the Noe Valley neighborhood is a Slow Street. Families share a blissful moment while in the midst of this concrete valley.

“It’s been incredible. It’s been the best way to meet neighbors, the community. You see kids learning how to ride their bicycles, you grab coffee with people you never met before,” expressed Sarah Katzen, a Noe Valley resident.

Just to refresh your memory, the SFMTA introduced the concept of Slow Streets as an way to incorporate other ways of getting around-you know, bicycling, running, walking. They’re not closed to cars, the city just wants you to drive slowly but really who wants to drive at a snail’s pace when you can drive at a normal speed on other streets. And that’s how the controversy of Slow Streets began.

“Pedestrians do not need to walk on the street. Lake Street is half a bock from more than 1,000 acres of trails and parks in the Presidio,” that was at least one opposing voice out of many who spoke at a hearing before the Board of Supervisors in 2022.

San Francisco’s highly-debated ‘Slow Streets’ program to continue. But what does it actually mean?

Not every neighbor living on or near Lake Street in the inner Richmond district has embraced their slow street. In fact, some argue the program was forced upon them.

Someone even wrote “communism” on a Slow Street sign.

We heard there have been tense moments between pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.

We wanted to see if that was true and decided to set up a chair to observe.

We found more-than-your-average number of cars insisting on driving on Lake street. Some even exceeding the suggested 15 miles per hour.

In Noe Valley, the slow street program has also been divisive.

“We see guys, they’ll yell at people on the street for being on the street, ‘get out of the street,’ right next to a sign here. So that’s the kind of response that we’re getting for the motorists,” explained a Noe Valley resident who only gave us his first name, Rich.

Some say slow streets are safe streets. So far 14 pedestrians have died in traffic accidents in the city,

MORE: Infant dies following horrific crash at SF West Portal bus station, police say

However, no one has ever been killed on a slow street.

A few locals have also complained that having a slow street has increased the amount of traffic on the adjacent streets.

ABC7 News was able to analyze San Francisco County transportation data available for roads adjacent to slow streets. Though data wasn’t available for all of them.

The one’s we could review actually showed little to no traffic impact on nearby streets since the program was adopted.

But even those who want to keep them, say there are STILL issues that need to be addressed.

For example, a few construction workers now double park for most of the day on this slow street.

“There’s a lot of contractors or people who feel like because it’s a slow street they can just park. They’re not pulling permits, they’re not doing things the right way. They’re just doing it because it’s easy for them. I understand that but it does make it a hazard for people who are bicycling or walking because if forces them into oncoming traffic. That is very unsafe,” said Molly Hayden, a Page Street Steward.

She told us there is little to no enforcement which is the responsibility of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation agency, the SFMTA.

“We are doing out best to allocated our limited resources in a way that we see meets the highest value for that time.,” explained Amanda Eaken, Chair of the SFMTA Board of Directors.

MORE: Valencia Street update: SFMTA looks to get alternative for controversial center bike lane approved

SFMTA encourages people to report all incidents to the 311 customer service center.

Neighbors and merchants were adamantly opposed to having a slow street on a section of West Portal Avenue back when it was proposed. They fought both their district supervisor and the SFTMA and were successful.

George Wooding of the Midtown Terrace Homeowners Association said the slow street would have hurt business owners.

“What you do is you end up excluding a tremendous number of potential customers in an area and just destroying the merchants,” said Wooding.

We polled every leading San Francisco mayoral candidate. Mark Farrell said he supports most slow streets. Everyone else told us they favor keeping slow streets but all believe improvements are needed.

MORE: Former SF interim Mayor Mark Farrell on why he’s running for official seat, plan for downtown

We asked Eaken how the SFMTA plans on improving things to fit the specific needs of each community.

“So through a lot of detailed outreach and engagement and listening, learning from those community members what are their unique needs, we can then design which are those particular interventions. So this is really a conversation and collaboration to make sure that each streets meets the particular needs of that place,” added Eaken.

Saying it needs to evaluate all options for new sources of drinking water, Silicon Valley’s largest water district is studying a plan to build the first seawater desalination plant along the shores of San Francisco Bay.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose, has approved spending $1.7 million for Black & Veatch, a Walnut Creek firm, to conduct an engineering feasibility study over the next 12 months for a project near the bay’s shoreline in Palo Alto, Mountain View or San Jose.

Under the proposal, which is still in the early stages, the plant would take between 20 million to 80 million gallons of water a day from the bay, run it through filters to strip the salt out and serve from 10 million to 40 million gallons a day of freshwater to South Bay homes and businesses. That would provide about 11,000 to 44,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough for between 100,000 and 500,000 households.

The salty brine left over would be blended with treated wastewater from one of the South Bay’s sewage treatment plants to reduce its salinity and be released back into the bay.

“People ask us about desalination all the time,” said Tony Estremera, a member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board of directors. “Can we really do it? We don’t know. It’s worth looking at. We really do need to do a serious look at it, and this is a substantial look.”

In theory, desalination can provide an endless supply of water. In 2015, crews built a $1 billion desalination plant in Carlsbad, in San Diego County. It provides 54 million gallons per day — nearly 10% of the drinking water for San Diego. It is the largest plant in North America.

But desalination is also the most expensive type of water to produce. The San Diego County Water Authority pays $3,400 an acre-foot for the Carlsbad water — more than double the cost of water it imports from other sources, and up significantly from the $2,200 it paid when the plant opened a decade ago.

By comparison, the Santa Clara Valley Water District pays about $400 an acre-foot to the federal and state government for water it draws from the Delta. However, that water is not as reliable during droughts.

Why is it so expensive? Desalination plants run 24 hours a day, blasting water through membranes at pressures higher than a fire hose, and use huge amounts of energy.

Desalinated water is far more costly than recycling wastewater, repairing leaky underground pipes, expanding groundwater storage, or giving people rebates to voluntarily remove their lawns or buy water-efficient appliances, experts say.

“This would be the first seawater desalination plant built in the Bay Area,” said Heather Cooley, director of research for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water research organization in Oakland. “We haven’t seen others because we have cheaper alternatives with fewer environmental impacts.”

The district proposal is likely to face significant environmental opposition because it would be near, or inside, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, an environmental group in Oakland, said that building pipes into a national wildlife refuge to draw millions of gallons of water a day from sensitive wetland areas that are home to endangered species would almost certainly cause a major controversy.

“The public has a deep love for the bay and has made a big investment in protecting these parts of the shoreline,” he said. “The public would not likely welcome new development of this type in that area.”

Several alternatives have been tried in the past.

In 2009, many of the largest water agencies in the Bay Area paid to construct a pilot desalination plant in Bay Point, just west of Pittsburg. It ran for more than a year.

But the group, which included the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Contra Costa Water District and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, dropped the idea in 2012.

“The cost of the water was higher than other sources for us,” said Andrea Pook, a spokeswoman for EBMUD. “And the environmental permitting would have been challenging.”

Similarly, the Marin Municipal Water District proposed building a desalination plant on the bay near San Rafael in 2009 but shelved the plan after Marin voters approved a ballot measure in 2010 saying desalination facilities couldn’t be built without voter approval.

Building such a plant in the South Bay, which is shallow and subject to limited tidal action, would require 14 permits from federal agencies and 8 from state agencies, according to a brief environmental feasibility study that the Santa Clara Valley Water District commissioned last year.

GEI Consultants, an Oakland firm that did the study, evaluated 13 alternatives along the San Jose, Mountain View and Palo Alto shorelines. The most feasible options, it found, were to draw in water from underground pipes in the bay off Palo Alto or Mountain View. The most likely site for a desalination plant, however, is in Alviso, the study concluded, where there is more land than other possible sites near Moffett Field and the Palo Alto Baylands. The brine could be disposed of in deeper waters in the middle of the bay, or in a marsh after being blended with treated wastewater, the study found.

The cost would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars if not more than $1 billion. Specific estimates will be part of the engineering study, Estremera said.

There are 12 ocean desalination plants in California now. Most are small and serve military bases, power plants and other facilities, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Apart from the Carlsbad plant, there are plants in Santa Barbara and Catalina Island. Two years ago, the Coastal Commission rejected a large plant at Huntington Beach, citing environmental concerns.

In November 2022, however, the commission approved a permit for a $330 million seawater desalination facility in Marina, in Monterey County. That plant, at the site of a former sand mining factory, will produce 5 million gallons of water a day at a cost of $6,000 an acre-foot for the water-starved Monterey Peninsula.

The commission also approved a plant in Dana Point which will produce 5 million gallons a day. It would be built by the South Coast Water District in Laguna Beach and is expected to open in 2028.

“This study is really a response to the community, and our public officials,” Estremera said. “We want to take a good serious look at this and answer once and for all whether it’s possible here.”

Originally Published: July 23, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.