Editorial

Lake Merced needs big fix

September 18, 2001

Last week the Independent reported that a committee of the Recreation and Park Commission gave the OK to a $1.4 million plan to restore part of Lake Merced, the city's largest body of fresh water, in the southwest corner of San Francisco near the border with Daly City and San Mateo County.

The full Recreation and Park Commission will soon consider approving the plan, and it certainly ought to do so.  The Impound area of the lake, the southernmost part, would get a boardwalk that would provide access to viewing the lake and its picturesque beauty up close.  The project also would restore a damaged fishing pier and upgrade some nearby parking areas.

It's about time that the city started devoting some serious attention and money to Lake Merced.  The lake should be one of San Francisco's proudest achievements instead of the afterthought it has been for too long.  It wasn't that long ago -- less than 20 years -- that Lake Merced was the finest urban fishing hole in all of California, and perhaps in the nation.  Kids from gritty neighborhoods could hop on a bus and spend a peaceful day relaxing and fishing there.  Retired people came from all over the Bay Area, and although they said they came to fish, the shoreline buzzed with jokes, fish tales, and yarns about the good old days.

Now, the lake itself is all but deserted, almost unnoticed by the duffers at Harding Park Golf Course or the joggers who circle the lake's shoreline.

The Impound project is a good idea and deserves the support of park commissioners.  But San Franciscans' concern -- and the interest and action of our appointed administrators and elected representatives -- should not stop with one pretty project in one corner of the lake.  Not one of Lake Merced's underlying problems will be solved until we light a fire under our city and state representatives to create a recycled-water system and help resolve the regional issue of drawing water from the underground aquifer that supplies both Lake Merced and Pine Lake near Stern Grove.

Lake Merced is designated by the city as a source of drinking water in case of emergencies.  Earthquakes and droughts are both inevitable in California.  An earthquake could endanger San Francisco's supply of water from the Sierra Nevada, and a drought would make any source of good drinking water even more valuable.  Why is this valuable source of high-quality emergency drinking water still being used for mere irrigation of wasteful landscaping?  And why isn't there an alternative?  The city should make as one of its highest recreation and public-utility priorities the creation of a recycled- (or "reclaimed") water program to alleviate some of the demand for water from the lake's aquifer.

The Independent has been beating the drum in editorials, calling for greater efforts to restore this unique, beautiful and useful lake.  New articles have chronicled declining water quality and the important but slow efforts by concerned people such as the members of the Friends of Lake Merced.  Finally, it looks like more people are starting to wake up to the alarming state of the lake and the great potential it still holds.  In its most recent newsletter, San Francisco Tomorrow, a prominent civic organization dedicated to improving the city's urban environment, issued a call for members to write to the city's PUblic Utilities Commission and urge the PUC to "make the production and distribution of reclaimed water a high priority."

Let's go one better.  Visit www.lakemerced.org, and join the Friends of Lake Merced if you like what you see there.  The write to PUC president Ann Moller Caen.  Write to your city supervisors.  Write to your representatives in state government.  Let them know how much you value Lake Merced and that you want them to start building solutions -- now.