Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 4: Barriers

Neighbors Along the Riverbed Episode 4: Barriers

Mickey Morgan 0:00
It can be super difficult to actually do something about what we know is going on in our neighborhoods, with nonhumans, like endangered and threatened salmon populations, and with our own social human issues. Even the idea of thinking our issues are separate from environmental issues is a barrier. Because when we forget that our ecosystem is interdependent, we prioritize differently. All across California, there are literal physical barriers in the form of culverts, dams and weirs, and other flood control which can all be deadly and dangerous to salmon as they move through to spawn. Recently, upon the bipartisan infrastructure law being passed, NOAA Fisheries recommended 20 projects to remove fish passage barriers on the West Coast, six in California. A fish ladder was put into the BART weir on Alameda Creek, removing one of the barriers to salmon and steelhead, who migrate from saltwater to freshwater for spawning, and the adult steelhead and the next generation of baby salmon, steelhead, who move back out to saltwater.

Would you say that there's any other like barriers to access besides the physical barriers that you've that we're like, potentially solving here? Whether like social or physical in a different location, or, you know, in terms of conservation and protection.

Joe Sullivan 1:50
Um, yeah, once you get out to the mouth of here, there is a lack of like rearing habitat, we call it. It's there's lack of marshes and channelized areas, backwater areas that historically used to be at the at the mouth where the stream dumps into the bay. But because of industrialization, and a lot of different impacts and development there's a lack of the marsh system. So they need that because I'm sure you know, they go from freshwater to saltwater, they go from all sorts of physiological changes. So it takes them a time to adapt to that saltwater, right? So they they do need those estuaries and there's a lack of that. So restoring the marshes out in the bays is super important for the species as a whole.

Mickey Morgan 2:50
And are those just like all channelized now, or?

Joe Sullivan 2:53
I mean, yeah, so this literally is a straight channel, and it just empties into the bay.

Mickey Morgan
Oh, okay.

Joe Sullivan
There are marshes kind of around it, not nearly the amount that there historically used to be. And how fish, salmon and steelhead are going to find those and utilize them as is still we're working on.



Mickey Morgan 3:17
The physical threats to salmon and steelhead are not only their lack of access to floodplains and complex habitats for their migration. All seven kinds of salmon and steelhead I'm focusing on all along the coast are impacted by the amount of water and waterways their temperature and quality

Speaker 2 3:38
Our conservation of water. And they need to you know, this is the community, keep the community clean.

Mickey Morgan
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2
So it was like I was they had a lot here but they cleaned it up.

Mickey Morgan
So a lot of garbage?

Speaker 2
Yeah, just you know, eating and throwing trash down, you know, there's receptacles, put it in the receptacle.

Mickey Morgan 4:08
We have a responsibility to each other, including our non human neighbors. But what are the things that we work with everyday that stop us from doing that?

Speaker 3 4:21
I feel like it's really hard for people to find time to like, go out and see like how things are connected. Like when the salmon migrate back to freshwater they bring with them a lot of nutrients from like the marine environment. But it's hard to like to see or visualize if you don't have the time to actually like go out and observe nature over a long, like long term scale. I feel like that and then the disconnect between like seeing them as like a different entity rather than a life form. There's another big But yeah,

Speaker 4 5:03
I think it's hard these days politically. Just because at least my sense is that I feel overwhelmed with things to care about.

Mickey Morgan
Right. I think that's another element of like people being empathetic about these things is it
just feels like so much


Mickey Morgan 5:18
Yeah, like social justice burnout.

Speaker 4 5:21
Yeah. Yeah, kind of or also just like, you know, one can only direct one's energy to so many things. And it just feels like there are so many political issues in this country.

Speaker 5 5:36
And, like, yeah, I personally, like you were saying, there's like, just a lot to care about. And I feel like, most of my, like friends and acquaintances who I would just say, probably self described as, like, more left, even amongst people who would probably be more likely to care about environmental issues, I feel like, I know, a lot of people who fall into the trap of like, the, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, so therefore, I don't have to really

Mickey Morgan
Right

Speaker 5
Care at all, because like, what is my individual impact making, and

Speaker 4
That's so true.

Speaker 5
In my personal opinion, for myself, I find that when I'm overwhelmed with the, like, sheer enormity of like things that are going poorly, and horribly, even that like I need, I wish I could fix or like, do some sort of good towards, I find that I can, like take refuge and the like, personal small scale decisions that I'm making, trying to be like, you know, sustainable. We're using reusable stuff and sort of plastics, I don't eat meat. Especially, I feel like especially because I work in a job where I'm consuming copious amounts of plastic and killing copious amounts of animals, it feels right for me to in my personal life, try to limit those things as much as physically possible. And like, that brings me a lot of like, I don't know, it, like helps my conscience to be able to make those decisions. But I also am not speaking for everyone. And I find that a lot of people just get overwhelmed with things and are just like, well, I can't care about anything else. Right. And instead of like, you know, taking refuge in the small changes they could make, they just choose to, like, not care about this thing, because it is one more thing. And I'm not saying that, like you're a bad person for doing crap. I'm just saying, Yeah, that's just like different approaches to dealing with the overwhelmingness. Of the many things that are going wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 7:41
I feel I feel like some people will take it to like in its biggest, probably like, the eco-fascism perspective of like, Oh, we're all gonna die. And like, you know, it's just gonna be us living in bunkers, underground, or whatever. Which I get, like, I go to those places, when I'm feeling really overwhelmed. But I also think it's just like, it feels like it's not up to me, as an individual, sometimes from like, you know, my entire lifetime, I will admit less carbon than, like Kylie Jenner's private. Right? And, and so it's just really frustrating to feel like, you know, we vote you're politically engaged, like we're doing, we're organizing, and still nothing is happening. Like, what do you do?

Speaker 3 8:28
Especially like, when most of the pollution is caused by corporations like not meeting environmental standards?

Mickey Morgan 8:34
Yeah. What is the impact that one person or small group can make? Once we become educated about climate change in our local waterways, and the salmon who should be living here, then what? What are the barriers to everyone becoming involved in restoring California Coastal salmon populations, and the waters that we all need to survive?

Bruce King 8:58
Oh, in terms of, like funding, even if we were to, even if citizens came up with, Hey, we got a grant, we know where we can get a grant and, and to do something, it would still have to go through an agency like flood control to actually manage the money and, and do the work so But what we're finding is flood control, like 15, 20 years ago actually had environmental staff that we know that essentially they did away with, they stopped. The the the director came in and said, you know, we're not going to do this kind of stuff as much anymore. Unless we really have to. So, you guys are laid off, the staff, you guys are gone.

Mickey Morgan
Yeah.

Ann E. Maris
This is in his report.

Bruce King
We've been poring through all the studies and even a lot of their reports, trying to summarize information and figure out what happened. And in then our next, our next step strategy is, you know, how do we reactivate some? How do we get the community and, and like the Board of Supervisors for the county, more informed, and so that our agencies can't hide behind information that people don't know.

Mickey Morgan 10:15
And what you guys mentioned earlier about the money also is like a lot of that it takes a certain kind of like either education or aptitude, to be able to look through those kinds of documents. Like they are dull, they are written in really complex, inaccessible language, like someone who doesn't, for example, have a college degree would probably not have the skills, the literacy skills to understand those knowledges unless they worked extremely hard to learn that. Like a new language, right?

Ann E. Maris 10:52
So it's, so there's the reality of of it being too difficult to read. And then what we encountered when we started the save ruby meadows thing too, was that the like the council members, were telling the people, “Oh, you don't understand this, you don't know what you're talking about.” So then the the residents are just feeling ashamed, right, for being stupid. So so that's another technique to keep them disengaged. And this is an SB this here is not. But once you hit Castro Valley, it's an SB 1000 neighborhood. So part of what they're supposed to be doing is removing those sorts of barriers to enable people who don't normally participate in government to participate. So that's a lot of what what I do is monitor what meetings and then try and get people to go right to speak up. Because often these huge 100 million dollar decisions are being made and there's not one citizen present. But these are public meetings. This is one thing COVID at least gave us.

Mickey Morgan
Yeah.

Ann E. Maris
It’s the online access. Because you used to have to drive, like all the way to Oakland, but now it's on Zoom. So that's one thing that we're fighting for right now is to keep some zoom access. So we're afraid they're going to shut that down. Yeah, so then they'll go “Oh, COVID’s over no more zoom.”

Mickey Morgan 12:17
While a lot of what needs to be done in order to make a dent in the climate crisis is large scale and needs to be dealt with on a state, federal and corporate level. I think the little things that we do, does make a difference. Picking up trash along the water or recycling won't create the restoration needed for these seven salmon populations to no longer be endangered or threatened. It does make a difference to the individuals that are part of the local ecosystem or neighborhood, the neighborhood as a whole and to maintain hope and joy in ourselves so that systemic change can be made and that does make a difference. If you have any questions or want to add to this conversation, email salmon neighbors@gmail.com.