I love the rain.  It allows me the excuse to relax and do nothing (if I can).

The only thing I don’t like is the mess that comes with the rain – 3 dogs, 12 paws can track in a lot of mud!

By the late 90′s over 100 people lived on the landfill in makeshift homes with views of San Francisco and Marin. Dog walkers loved the unregulated haven which allowed their canine companions to romp unfettered by leashes and rules, and the cats and dogs who lived with and around the homeless camps stayed out of their way.

More and more shorebirds came to rest in the artificial docks and estuaries created by the dumpers, and as the mudflats along the Albany shoreline were restored, the area became a boon to wildlife and to bird watchers.

It seemed everyone could co-exist. But now all the harmony created by official disinterest is ending. As part of the new Eastshore State Park the homeless have been evicted, the dogs threatened with punitive leash laws, and the artists told their work is not for a ‘family park’. Is this progress? Or is it just government control, that can’t let anything just ‘be’?

Jill Posener – Albany Landfill

The history of the Bulb dates to the 1890s, when Santa Fe, under the guise of the Berkeley Waterfront Company, bought up large portions of the Albany, Berkeley, and Emeryville shorelines. These lands remained largely undeveloped until the Golden Gate Turf Club built a racetrack on land leased from Santa Fe; Golden Gate Fields opened in 1947. By the mid-1950s, approximately 2,000 acres of fill had been dumped along the shore. The odd bulb-shaped landfill jutting into the Bay arose from a contract signed in 1963 by the city of Albany and Santa Fe for disposal of debris from construction and freeway projects. Citizen opposition to the dumping began almost immediately and continued through the 1980s. The dumping finally ended in 1987 as a result of lawsuits against the landfill operator and a successful campaign to include the newly created land and shoreline in the proposed Eastshore State Park. <

Persis M. Karim, Bay Nature (July – Sept. 2002) . http://www.baynature.com/2002julysept/ott_2002julysept.html