Knowles would know. Over the past fifteen years he has visited this particular cove, located directly behind the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, hundreds of times to harvest wild seaweed. Knowles’ small company, Rising Tide Sea Vegetables, is one of a handful of ecologically minded businesses in Northern California that specialize in wild-crafting sea vegetables—harvesting seaweed from its natural habitat—for human consumption. Started in 1981 by his ex-girlfriend Kate Marianchild, Rising Tide has been sustainably harvesting, drying, and selling highly nutritious seaweed, including nori, wakame, kombu, sea palm, and Fucus, for 28 years.

The Mendocino coast’s rough, cold waters, and the high nutrient content of its intertidal zones, make it uniquely conditioned for sea vegetable growth. Knowles, perching on a rock, explains that the ocean’s turbulence increases photosynthesis and cohabitation among different species, and says that sea palms have evolved to grow in the harsh waves. As Knowles talks about the importance of the lunar cycle and tides, praising the violence of the ocean and the chill of its relatively unpolluted waters, he pinches a small piece of early-season Fucus off a rock and offers it to me. It is succulent, crunchy and has a pleasantly salty, nutty taste.

For thousands of years, humans have benefited from sea vegetables’ abundance. Edible ocean-growing
algae are full of essential vitamins and minerals—including calcium, iron, iodine and phosphorus—and offer high levels of protein and unsaturated fatty acids. Studies show that kombu and wakame contain sodium alginate (algin), which strips radioactive particles and heavy metals from the body.

Knowles’ company strives to make seaweed more accessible for mainstream eaters by offering blended packages of sea vegetables and prepared snacks. Dried wakame, sea palm and kombu can be added to stews, or rehydrated and tossed into salads. Nori, the same seaweed used to wrap sushi, has a nutty and salty flavor when crisped up in the oven and can be crumpled over rice and stir-fries. Rising Tide also sells small packages of a dried sea palm and almond mixture, and maple wakame and sesame seed bars. All of their products have the distinct taste of the ocean.

Knowles and his two employees are able to trim fronds from most of the sea vegetables on foot. Wearing wetsuits, they wade in—sometimes up to their chests—or jump along the jagged rocks during low tide. To reach spots farther offshore, they paddle around in kayaks. The job is not without its perils. Large, unexpected waves occasionally knock the harvesters from their rocks, and the sharp knives they use to cut the algae can slip in the wet conditions. So far Knowles is the only member of his company who has been hurt, yet he remains endlessly enthusiastic about the job that takes him to the water at dawn all summer long.

Yet Knowles worries that his business may never reach its thirtieth anniversary. Although the sea vegetable
supply remains robust, state law may deny sea vegetable wild-crafters access to the coast as soon as 2010.
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), adopted by the California legislature in 1999, directs the state to reevaluate its existing protections and to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) up and down the coast. These protected areas are “no-take zones,” meaning that the removal of certain marine life—or all marine life in highly protected areas—will be illegal. If the act is enforced as planned, around eighteen percent of the coast will be off-limits to seaweed wild-crafters, despite the fact that hand-harvesting does no harm to the seaweed or the surrounding ecosystem.

Motivated by a desire to assure the quality of their product and by a love for the ocean ecosystem with which they are so closely attached, sea vegetable wild-crafters strive to maintain a harmonious relationship with the marine life around them. They began using words like “sustainable” and “ecosystem” in the 1980s, before such terms entered common discourse. Now, after decades of dedicated ocean stewardship and long fights to keep the Mendocino area free of oil interests and polluting industries, Knowles and his fellow sea vegetable aficionados have a new, unlikely adversary: other environmentalists.

The Marine Life Protection Act is a relatively straightforward piece of legislation. Only ten pages long, it seeks to evaluate, expand and unify the hodge-podge of existing Marine Protected Areas along the California coastline and provide greater protection to native marine species. It also gives the California Department of Fish & Game authority over the act’s implementation and enforcement, and specifically calls for regional decision-making processes and increased conservation based on the best available science.Yet despite the simplicity of the legislation, beneath the surface lie controversies, bureaucratic struggles, and a multitude of special interests. (For Terrain’s previous coverage of the controversy surrounding California’s Marine Protected Areas, see “Marine Reserves Generate Plans, Passions… and Perhaps Fish,” Summer 2008.)

After several attempts to implement the Marine Life Protection Act failed due to lack of funding and protests from stakeholders—commercial and recreational fishermen, sea vegetable wild-crafters, abalone divers, and oyster harvesters among them—in 2004, private, nonprofit interests led primarily by the Packard Foundation and the Resource Legacy Foundation Fund allocated around $18 million to support the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, the best-funded and most decisive attempt to create a MPA system. The California coast was divided into five sub-regions: South Coast, Central Coast, North Central Coast, North Coast, and the San Francisco Bay.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the California Resources Agency Secretary, Mike Chrisman, to select experts in policy, environmental law, and resource management to oversee the process and advise the Department of Fish & Game. These “Blue Ribbon Task Forces” are made up of volunteer appointees, and are intended to help promote compromise and transparency while expediting the act’s implementation.

The North Central Coast area, representing the area from Point Arena to Pigeon Point and the southern boundary of the sea vegetable wild-crafters’ harvesting zone, was the second region to embark on its research. Over the last year, stakeholder representatives and participating preservationists attended hundreds of hours of meetings, discussions, presentations, and workshops. They drew new Marine Protected Areas, redrew existing ones, and argued over the protective level of each.

The resulting plan, dubbed the Integrated Preferred Alternative (IPA), is a patchwork of 31 Marine Protected Areas of varying levels of protection. Environmental advocacy groups and the Blue Ribbon Task Force, mostly pleased with the outcome, are pressuring Fish & Game to accept the plan with no further changes or compromises.

Some environmental groups have lauded this effort as inclusive and effective. Kaitilin Gaffney, Central Coast program manager for the Ocean Conservancy, has been following the process for five years and believes it is one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation in California. She feels that the process has been more than fair: “I would say the MLPA is clearly the most participatory and inclusive process that I’ve ever participated in.”

Yet some local stakeholders who use the ocean as a subsistence food source and were not selected for a decision- making position feel steamrolled. Jim Martin, the West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, who has been involved with various MLPA plans for ten years, feels that the process wasn’t as inclusive as it’s been made out to be: “That is complete BS. It’s open in the sense that there are a lot of meetings to go to and a lot of things to read and speakers to listen to. But when it comes to public comment, you get one minute.”

Both sides of the dispute care deeply about conserving Northern California’s ocean ecosystems, but they disagree about the best way to achieve that goal. For Gaffney, the act offers an opportunity for the complete preservation of some areas, promoting research and hopefully spurring the resurgence of some key marine species. Yet local stakeholders like Martin, Knowles, and John Lewallen—one of the first seaweed wild-crafting enthusiasts on the West Coast, who started his Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company in 1980—feel that the act fails to address one of the most pressing threats to the marine life—water pollution—and disregards the importance of the ocean to the local food supply. “Our job is to tell the truth to the environmental movement, because I think they have lost sight that humans are part of the ecosystem,” says Lewallen. “We should strive for stewardship and sustainable harvesting.”

Knowles feels similarly: “There are people who are very environmentally aware and are concerned about preservation. They think about saving ecosystems and polar bears and sensitive animal species, but they don’t think well about human communities. And it looks to me like that process is geared more towards what I would consider an owning-class preservationist policy rather than thinking well about natural ecosystems and human ecosystems and local economies.”

For the seaweed wild-crafters, the prospect of being barred from protected areas is particularly frustrating because their hand-harvesting business does no harm. Although the depletion of fish, abalone,
crab, and oyster populations is an increasing problem,and perhaps well-placed no-take zones could boost their numbers, trimming a nori frond neither kills the plant nor decreases its future growth. Highly protected no-take zones don’t make such subtle distinctions.

In defense of the no-take zones, Gaffney asserts that the point of a Marine Protected Area is to provide complete protection for the ecosystem, and that since seaweed is part of the ecosystem, it should remain untouched. “I am not saying that seaweed harvest harms the California ocean ecosystem,” Gaffney explains.“What I’m saying is the main idea of the reserves is to protect the ocean ecosystem in all its pieces. Most of the coast is still about sustainable use, but in those few areas, it should be fully protected as part of that ecosystem.”

The sea vegetablers say this type of all-or-nothing approach may put all the wild-crafters in the Mendocino area out of business. The most accessible spots along the coast, and therefore the best for seaweed harvesting, are also the places where the MLPA focuses its protection. Highly protective MPAs will also deny long-cherished fishing spots to recreational hook and line fishermen who primarily
fish to feed their families and are already regulated by Fish & Game.

For Mendocino natives, the most pressing concern is local control: Many feel deep resentment over the privately funded process, believing corporate money is pushing the process through in an aggressive and single-minded manner. “We are Californians,” says Lewallen. “We want a clean ecosystem and a sustainable source of food and instead it’s moving towards industrialization and gentrification of the coast… The MLPA has us fighting each other. It couldn’t be set up by the people. It couldn’t be set up by the state. It’s corporate!”

The seaweed harvesters are particularly concerned that the MPA system may give the illusion of complete ocean conservation, but through its selective protection of marine life will undermine local calls for the stewardship of the entire Mendocino Coast. The area has remained pristine, they say, because local stakeholders have invested in the ocean and have fought for decades to keep industry and oil interests out. They want to know who will carry on the battle if the small, local businesses close down.

Gaffney is quick to point out that the MLPA is just one important part of ocean conservation and that other legislation will be needed to protect water quality and limit the industrialization of the coastline. But that answer is not good enough for the sea vegetable wild-crafters who envision a future in which they will be denied access to seaweed, but Pacific Gas & Electric will be allowed—even encouraged—to harvest wave energy in areas adjacent to the MPAs. PG&E recently invested millions of dollars in wave energy research off the coast of Fort Bragg—the company was just approved for $4.8 million in funding by the California Public Utilities Commission and $1.2 million from the Department of Energy for their 40 megawatt WaveConnect project. Knowles fears that a wave energy program of this size will cause irreparable damage to the intertidal zone.

“This is the irony of the situation,” Knowles explains. “They’re talking about getting these no-take zones where it is a controlled situation, but of course you get these wave energy [plants] anywhere from five miles long with 100 wave machines… That is absolutely going to impact the near shore ecosystem.”

The final controversy surrounding the MLPA involves enforcement and funding. After the foundation’s money runs out, it remains unclear how Fish & Game will pay to enforce the levels of protection in each Marine Protected Area. Environmentalists seem confident that there is enough public and private interest in the act to assure future funding. But if enforcement is lax the opportunity for poaching will increase, and then everyone will lose.

Despite concern over new rules that may limit their collecting next year, the sea vegetable wild-crafters began harvesting in May and will continue through August. Lewallen says that the marine ecosystems where he harvests are in excellent condition, despite the absence of strict no-take zones: “The seaweed is in great shape. Last year was better than ever. And the water is clean.”

For Knowles, the key is to balance the human need for sustenance with responsible care for the ocean’s health. “We watch the growth patterns and harvesting patterns to reduce our impact,” he explains. “We have to think past sustainable, and start thinking about systems, as opposed to one species. That’s our philosophy.”

It all started on September 14, 2006, the day the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that a virulent variety of E. coli , strain O157-H7, had infected and sickened fifty people. E. coli can cause cramps, diarrhea, and ultimately kidney failure. The Federal Department of Agriculture reported that bagged spinach probably caused the outbreak and urged consumers not to purchase or eat fresh spinach products. By the first week of October, 204 people had fallen ill in 26 states, and three had died. Scientists traced the pathogen to Natural Selection Foods (commonly known as Earthbound Farms), in San Juan Bautista, California.

An FDA recall sent spinach sales sliding so low that the industry lost around $80 million; the recall hit California growers, who produce 75 percent of all leafy greens, especially hard. Grocery store owners and national retailers like Wal-Mart pulled all bagged spinach dated between August 17 and October 1. No fresh spinach was sold for five days.
The overwhelming scope of the outbreak and the deadly nature of O157-H7 spurred intensive media coverage, which left leafy greens growers and processors scrambling to assure their products’ safety. By 2007, the beleaguered bagged greens industry, nervous over profit losses, potential lawsuits, and an increasing pathogen problem, united to centralize food safety standards. Nearly every greens producer in the state signed onto the optional California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement (LGMA), which sets safety and sanitation standards for produce handlers. Today the LGMA has 120 certified participants who together produce 99 percent of the leafy greens in California.

Although the LGMA has been successful in increasing sales and lowering contamination, an over-zealous application of its safety advisories has produced another result: a war against wildlife and a reversal of hard-won efforts to encourage farmers to conserve wild areas near cultivated fields. Perhaps because the FDA has not yet determined the original source of 2006’s deadly E. coli strain or its mode of transport to the contaminated
fields, the industry has adopted a zero-sum approach to food safety. Everything is a potential culprit and must be sterilized, even nature.

Some conventional processors and national retailers, using the LGMA’s more benign metrics as a guide, began imposing highly stringent regulations, coined “super metrics,” in an attempt to create “sterile farms” and remove all risk of pathogen contamination. Mice, frogs, birds, pigs, and deer have been incriminated as potential pathogen vectors, and auditors and food safety consultants demand that farmers tear out hedgerows and other vegetation, kill wildlife, and erect fences in the name of consumer safety. In an attempt to remove risk from a natural and inherently variable product, the bagged greens industry has pitted human health against the environment.

The industrial debacle
“It all changed after the [2006] outbreak,” says Dale Coke, founder of Coke Farm, a 300-acre organic produce farm in San Juan Bautista, California. The veteran baby greens grower stops his white ATV and points to a neighboring conventional farm where carefully plowed, unplanted rows stretch straight for acres, framed by razed edges and ditches doused with herbicide. PVC pipes filled with rodenticide line eight-foot-tall fences topped with barbed wire, while a large sign demands “Think Food Safety.”

While these ordered features, designed to keep wildlife out, conform to the efficiency requirements of leafy green processors and distributors, fertilizing and processing methods could spread disease far more efficiently than, say, a mouse. For example, contaminated irrigation water is a likely E. coli vector. Pathogen-carrying water sprayed on lettuce fields before harvest can make it into processed, ready-to-eat bags despite the chlorine baths used by processing plants. Researchers have also suggested that fields fertilized with improperly treated raw manure from livestock could spread contamination, as can feces deposited by wild animals.

Large-scale growers use machines to cut thousands of pounds of leafy greens at the stem and ship them to processing plants, where tons of lettuces from various farms are washed together and sealed in plastic bags. Millions of bags of greens are produced each week. One load of fresh-cut lettuce carrying E. coli pathogens could contaminate thousands of bags before being shipped across the nation, and the technologically advanced bags keep greens fresh for over two weeks, making them effective incubators for the bacterium.

According to the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the FDA, since 2002, all E. coli outbreaks associated
with lettuce and spinach have occurred in processed, fresh-cut, bagged greens. “We have a record of fourteen outbreaks from 2002 [to today] linked to fresh-cut leafy greens,” says FDA press officer Stephanie Kwisnek. “They were all in sealed bags.”

Killer bugs and wildlife
Hundreds of strains of E. coli live in the environment and in our intestines, many of which pose little threat to human health. Serotype O157-H7 is a nasty new pathogen, a likely product of antibiotic use in the industrial beef industry. Detected for the first time about thirty years ago, O157-H7 is virulent, highly resistant, and, unfortunately, is often found in our food, particularly in meat products. While the pathogen is eliminated easily by heat (industry insiders call cooking a “kill step”), leafy greens remain a possible carrier since they are eaten raw.
Scientists and health officials widely recognize Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) as the primary source of the bacteria. Highly populated cattle-growing operations house and feed thousands of animals for at least 45 days before slaughter. According to the CDC, since 2003 the nation’s 238,000 feedlot operations have produced 500 million tons of manure, and anywhere from two to fifty percent of a herd can carry O157-H7 and shed the bacteria in their poop. In a public presentation last November, Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the high concentration of stressed animals, sub-optimal hygiene, and the abundant use of antibiotic treatments encourage O157-H7 contaminations to spread quickly through feedlot animals. “The fecal veneer that covers the entire earth increases dramatically in a feedlot,” quips Dr. Lawrence.

Massive cattle feedlots may be the top reservoir of E. coli O157-H7, but it is still uncertain how the pathogens travel to farms. However, some farmers fear that wild animals living near these feedlots are ingesting contaminated feces and then depositing O157-H7 on or near a leafy greens farms or water sources, thereby spreading the contagion. The FDA’s Kwisnek points out that for the 2006 outbreak, “The exact cause has not been determined and probably never will be. … However, some of the waterways were contaminated with cattle and wildlife feces, so the farmers are taking action.”

In order to mitigate all possible vectors, Scott Horsfall, CEO of the LGMA, says that food safety auditors focus on potential causes of contamination: worker sanitation, manure, water, and wildlife. “There is a certain amount of scientific evidence that wildlife can be a carrier of E. coli,” says Horsfall. “So they are definitely one of the risk factors.”

“Wildlife must certainly be considered as a potential vector for E. coli,” agrees Will Daniels, vice president of quality, food safety and organic integrity at Earthbound Farms. “The problem is that we grow produce basically in the wild… The idea is to identify if there is a risk and then develop realistic control measures.” Yet although the producers’ and auditors’ concern is real, the science some have cited to justify the removal of wildlife is contradictory. Diana Stuart, a grad student in the Environmental Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz, has compiled statistics from a variety of studies that show most wild animals have a low chance of carrying E. coli: deer (up to two percent), wild birds (up to one percent), and rodents (none). Feral pigs are the only wild animals proven to be significant vectors of E. coli, with up to a fifteen percent carrier rate.

Field of contradictions
Many privately hired food safety auditors and consultants are attacking nature with unwarranted zeal. A 2007 Resource Conservation District of Monterey County Survey reports that of 181 responding growers, operating a combined 140,000 acres of row cropland, 47.7 percent were asked to discourage the presence of wildlife, and nearly all of these—40.7 percent of the 181 responding growers—complied.

“Discouraging wildlife” included removing filter strips, hedgerows, grassy waterways, and windbreaks to create large, sterile buffer zones between row crops and along field and property edges. From a conservation perspective, growing native plants along farm boundaries is highly beneficial, and environmental protection agencies have universally promoted the practice over the last two decades. It is intended to improve water quality, reduce erosion, increase microbial diversity in the soil, and provide habitat for native species. Yet about fifteen percent of the responding growers reported that auditors advised them to remove ponds and waterways, including tailwater recovery ponds and catch basins, and half of those growers complied. Nearly all of the surveyed farmers had adopted at least one practice—typically the removal of surrounding habitat vegetation—to deter the presence of mice, birds, frogs, pigs, and deer on farms.

Ironically, the removal of vegetation may increase the presence of pathogens in waterways. At a Wild Farm Alliance-
sponsored Food Safety Teach-In in San Francisco last November, Danny Marquis—a conservationist at the Natural Resources Conservation Service of Monterey County—said that conservation practices like hedgerows and filter strips can intercept airborne dust, chemical drift, and detain water-borne pathogens. Removing tailwater systems and sediment basins—practices that catch irrigation runoff and help filter the water before it re-enters the ecosystem or is reused on the farm—worsens water quality, increases sediment, and causes erosion. Even Natural Food Selections, which adheres to some of the strictest processing standards within its plant, acknowledges that wildlife is essential to a healthy environment and farm. “We need to take a little more realistic and progressive approach to mitigation,” says Earthbound’s Daniels. “We consider wildlife an integral part of the process.”

Even LGMA’s Horsfall notes that some of the safety metrics are over-the-top. “There are conflicting requirements out there causing a lot of confusion and I think there are excessive requirements, based on what I know,” says Horsall. “I think what everyone needs to focus on is setting one set of scientific requirements.”

Conflict of cultures
Dale Coke, one of a handful of farmers who refused to join the LGMA, has been selling organic greens mixes for over twenty years. The contrast in farming styles between a conventional farm and one of Coke’s fields is appreciable. Instead of straight, ordered rows, a cilantro patch abuts lettuce rows and workers pick winter greens by hand. Coke worries about the new leafy greens marketing environment and the stringency of the super metrics. “If growers get used to the unwarranted metrics you could get more sets of practices that mean nothing,” he explains. “And if they get some kind of consistency that they come up with for all commodities, it would be even worse.”

At the heart of the issue is a conflict of culture: Everyone cares about food safety, but problems arise because so few people know or care about farming. The result is a set of metrics that farmers think are irrational. Ken Kimes, who grows sprouts and other microgreens in Aptos, has dealt with food safety regulations for years. He believes that most auditors struggle with the idea that farms are, after all, outside. “You know, having birds flying around, it’s deadly!” he says dryly. “I had one [auditor] tell me that every time a bird pooped, it’s salmonella.”

Farmers are quick to point out that some things can never be controlled completely. Although agriculture has historically sought to control nature by isolating and harvesting productive plants and killing pests, respect and understanding of the natural world has been generally accepted as well.

Tom Willey, owner of T&D Willey Farm in Madera, feels the problem is at root one of increasing incidence of virulent pathogens in the industrial meat business, and that removing wildlife from farmland misses the point. He blames our nation’s obsession with sterility and the beef industry’s over-reliance on antibiotics for burgeoning superbugs. “The whole food safety baloney is not gonna go away,” Willey says. “It’s going to continue raising its ugly head. And I think a reason for that is because the industrial animal industry, through their production practices, are creating some dangerous microbes that small farms have a hard time protecting themselves against.” Reducing the predominance of O157-H7 on feedlots would require a reworking of the industrial cattle industry and the abandonment of excessive antibiotic use in livestock, regulations that fall under the domain of the USDA.

The risk associated with bagged greens is reducible, but regardless of the industry’s attempt to control surrounding wildlife, it’s never been entirely stamped out. Last September, 45 people in five states were sickened by bagged fresh-cut iceberg lettuce. The FDA has traced the source of the pathogen back to California, but the story got so little attention that neither the FDA nor the CDC even mention it on their Web sites. Four months later, the LGMA does not even know if one of its members was responsible, leaving little confidence that its measures are working.
Despite two years of regulations, E. coli outbreaks in bagged leafy greens have yet to be eradicated. Rather than reviewing, adjusting, and updating the self-regulatory framework of the LGMA and leafy greens processors, the FDA has taken a hands-off approach to industrial regulation and has also failed to foster cooperation between the agencies that oversee the meat and produce industries and that set environmental standards. The consumer is left to decide how much risk to take when eating pre-washed greens—and at what environmental cost those greens are produced. “It’s hard to talk about tolerating a certain amount of risk in food to save the environment or be sensible,” says farmer Kimes. “It’s kind of like everybody has to be on the zero-risk path. And this is where the burden comes in for the small farmer, and actually the large farmers too… there is really no way to mitigate and create zero risk.

California Assembly Bill 117, passed into law in 2002 in the wake of the energy crisis, sought to reform California’s energy business by giving city and county governments the power to localize energy production and distribution, and to choose more ecologically sound production methods. In turn, it stripped power-sourcing authority from investor-owned utilities like PG&E, and encouraged investment in local renewable energy. This program is called Community Choice Aggregation, or CCA, and in many ways, it is a complete reinterpretation of California’s current energy system. Renewable energy activists say it is essential for future energy stability and independence, while others, like PG&E, warn that it is too risky and may raise prices.

Even though the law passed six years ago, bureaucratic wrangling has stymied progress, and only now are communities beginning to move towards this model. At a time when the perils of climate change have wide public recognition and reducing carbon dioxide emissions has become a statewide priority, Marin, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland are all in stages of researching, developing, and implementing Community Choice Aggregation.

To understand how Community Choice Aggregation would work, it helps to compare it with today’s investor-owned system. PG&E provides energy to 15.1 million customers in Northern California. The utility is able to supply power on such a large scale by purchasing it on the wholesale market, signing contracts with power plants, and transmitting energy through an extensive power line grid.

The California Public Utilities Commission regulates the rate that PG&E charges its customers, which both protects consumers from drastic price fluctuations and makes competitively priced contracts an essential part of the utility’s economic success. For PG&E, large traditional energy generators—such as gas, coal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power plants—are attractive energy sources because they offer more energy at lower prices. Small, local, renewable producers, which transmit smaller amounts of intermittent power that often costs more, remain less compatible with the utility’s business goals.

“If you look at the business of the gas and electric utility, it is basically an energy importer,” says Paul Fenn, energy activist and author of AB 117. “That business is inconsistent with renewable energy. If heavy investments are made in local renewables, their carefully established supply chain will crash.”

According to Fenn and other renewable energy activists, establishing CCAs would cause an important shift in the energy business by allowing localities to take over power sourcing authority from large, private utilities, and invest long-term contracts into local, renewable energy providers. For example, Marin Clean Energy, Marin County’s proposed CCA, expects to secure power purchase contracts for wind, solar thermal, landfill gas, geothermal, and hydroelectric energy, which would supply 145,000 MWh of renewable energy. The smaller customer base would allow for a tailored energy supply system, and the government’s tax-exempt status would help offset investments in more expensive renewable energy generation.

Unlike a public power municipality, however, CCAs would still rely on PG&E to distribute the energy they source. The utility would continue to own and maintain power line infrastructure, handle billing, and provide customer service to all residents enrolled in the CCA plan. For many Bay Area cities and counties, establishing an energy aggregator seems like the least risky way to lower carbon dioxide emissions, invest in local renewables, and use less natural gas and coal. “CCA is easier [than public power] because it doesn’t have to absorb the creation of infrastructure, like power lines,” says Marin county supervisor and CCA advocate Charles McGlashan. “The utility continues doing what it does best, but the community chooses its energy source.”

In April 2008, Marin County and its eleven participating cities released a final version of its Community Choice Aggregation Business Plan. If the city and town councils pass the proposal, the county plans to create a Marin Clean Energy Joint Powers Authority in early 2009 and begin sourcing power for Marin municipalities and commercial and industrial accounts by 2010.

Dawn Weisz, principal planner for the Marin Community Development Agency and leading Marin Clean Energy advocate, expects that a CCA will help her county invest in more renewables while meeting or beating PG&E’s prices. To do this, Marin Clean Energy is planning to offer its customers two energy plans: the “Light Green” plan would offer one-quarter renewable energy for PG&E prices, and the “Green Tariff” would charge more for 100 percent renewable power. “The primary goal of Marin Clean Energy would be to purchase 25 percent renewable energy for our Light Green customers, growing to fifty percent in the next five years,” Weisz says. “That would be the maximum amount of renewable energy that we could offer while keeping costs at or below PG&E’s costs.” The Green Tariff option would charge 11.3 cents per kWh, about two cents more per kWh than the Light Green plan.

Weisz believes the financial advantages a local government entity has over an investor-run utility are key to offering competitive prices while also investing in renewable energy. “ First of all, we have low overhead, we have kind of a nonprofit structure,” Weisz says. “We don’t have a large number of staff and large headquarters to keep up. We don’t have to pay shareholder profits. We are tax-exempt and we are able to borrow money at a cheaper rate, usually a five percent discount compared to private utilities. We can also use our bonding authority to build and own our own renewable energy assets.”

Marin Clean Energy would seek to stimulate renewable resource development by providing financing for individual property owners who invest in energy efficiency upgrades, rooftop solar photovoltaic arrays, or small-scale wind projects. Using the same bonding authority that allows governments to invest in large infrastructure projects regardless of immediate financial return—like the new Bay Bridge for example—Marin would have the resources to invest in large-scale solar, wind, biomass, biogas, and ocean power facilities.

CCA proponents say it makes sense to invest in local renewable resources because it keeps money within the community. “We now send $150 million a year to PG&E headquarters; with CCA some of that would be spent locally,” says McGlashan, the county supervisor. He also notes that Marin Clean Energy expects to reduce carbon emissions by 300,000 tons a year and eventually will save customers money by avoiding hikes in natural gas prices.

PG&E is not nearly as confident about the benefits of Community Choice Aggregation. Officials insist that their company provides consumers with the best possible energy prices and is dedicated to lowering emissions and investing in renewable energy resources. “We are really proud that we deliver the cleanest energy in the nation among utilities,” says PG&E spokesperson Darlene Chiu. PG&E’s power, she says, is “over fifty percent emission-free.”

Recently PG&E has been marketing itself as an environmentally friendly company. The corporate Web site encourages energy efficiency, explains PG&E’s commitment to no-emission and renewable energy, and hopes to reach California’s twenty percent renewable energy mandate by the year 2010. The company reports that in 2007 it provided customers with a power mix in which approximately half came from emission-free sources like nuclear energy, hydroelectric power, and renewable sources, with the remaining half coming from mostly natural gas and some coal.

PG&E is also stepping up its pursuit of renewable technology. In 2008, PG&E announced contracts with BrightSource Energy, Inc. to buy 900 megawatts of renewable solar thermal power, and celebrated its advances in facilitating customer-owned solar, which transmits power from small-scale solar panels to the grid. The utility feels it is going above and beyond to provide clean energy for their customers and that a CCA could not do better.

Chiu claims that CCAs will be forced to raise energy rates, and says that such business plans have not provided sufficient data or proof of success. She says that the public should have more information. “We don’t oppose Community Choice Aggregation, we support customer choice,” says Chiu. “We just want to make sure that customers have an informed choice. But we also aren’t going to readily give up customers.” She believes customers will choose a lower price tag over higher renewable energy.

Will buying energy from a CCA cost customers more? It’s hard to say; since California doesn’t have any working CCAs yet, both PG&E spokespeople and CCA proponents are basing their opinions on future estimates. PG&E claims that increasing demand has raised renewable resource prices, and that CCA business plans are overly optimistic with their numbers. Local officials note that investments in renewable energy infrastructure will help reduce prices in the future, and say that they are dedicated to keeping rates low for all customers, including low-income families.

Despite PG&E’s official position, green energy activists and Bay Area officials feel the company is actively fighting the implementation of CCAs, leaving residents with a confusing choice indeed. “We are experiencing vigorous resistance from PG&E,” says Marin County Supervisor McGlashan. “They are trying to claim that we haven’t done our research and that our numbers are off. We’ll know how much renewable power will be available in one year and then we’ll see, but PG&E is trying to convince people that CCA is a bad idea so they won’t vote for it now. They want to scare people.”

Whether or not Bay Area cities approve the CCA business plans currently under consideration, residents of Northern California do have a choice: they can either put their faith in PG&E while applying pressure for necessary changes or commit to reworking the energy system. Both hold risks, but no risk seems greater than inaction. “The challenge of climate change is not simply to replace the brown power supply with a green power supply, but to completely reconfigure the grid,” says Fenn. Our challenge is not to simply turn off the lights when we leave a room, but to seriously consider where our electricity comes from.

The tree, its branches laden with more apples than one family could dream of eating fresh, grows in the backyard of someone’s three-bedroom home in the Berkeley flats. Without Forage Oakland, Wadud’s urban fruit collection and redistribution organization, most of the fruit would fall to the ground to rot.

I take a bite from one of the striped apples. It tastes crisp, juicy and alive with tart flavor. “These are delicious…” I say.

“They’ll be perfect for a pie or apple butter,” Wadud agrees.

A foraging revolution germinates

The inspiration for Forage Oakland took root four years ago when Wadud, a native of Washington, DC, joined Americorps and traveled to the Bay Area. She began teaching children how to garden at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard, and was amazed by the length of the growing season and the variety of plants that thrived in the Bay Area’s coastal climate.

During long bike rides around her new neighborhood in the Temescal, says Wadud, “I started to notice the pure mass of unharvested fruit and I wanted to change how much of it was going to waste.” Wadud soon developed a serious foraging hobby. “I started making little maps of the neighborhood and of edible things in people’s backyards, like fruit trees and forageable greens,” she explains. After years of taking fruit to her neighbors and keeping a bit for herself, she decided to expand her delicious pastime into a barter organization. “I thought it would be great if people who have a surplus of fruit could donate it,” she ays. “From there, Forage Oakland was born.”

In April 2008, Wadud created a blog, posted her plan online, and began contacting her neighbors about donating their extra produce. The enrollment process is simple: anyone living in Oakland, Berkeley or San Francisco can contact Forage Oakland by e-mail or phone and establish a harvesting day based on when the fruit is expected to be ripe. Forage Oakland volunteers will arrive only on the pre-established date, and if the fruit is not yet ready, they will reschedule. If the donor wishes to receive fruit in exchange, on picking day Wadud will typically bring a mixed selection of locally harvested fruit. As of now, the program is only open to those who can barter with produce already growing in their backyards, but Wadud hopes to eventually expand Forage Oakland’s services with a weekly pick-up/drop-off site—much like a Community Supported Agriculture box—that will also distribute produce based on need.

Support for the program has been nearly universal. Heightened awareness about eating locally and sustainably aided Forage Oakland’s mission, and according to Wadud, most people appreciate that their fruit is not wasted. “You know, you can go to the grocery store and get apples and grapes from Chile, or nuts imported from New Zealand, or you can go to your neighbors’ yard and harvest their apples and their grapes,” Wadud says. “Why buy an apple that has been shipped 3,000 miles when we have almost everything we need right here?”

Forage Oakland grows …fast

“It can get a bit overwhelming because it’s really taking off, but it’s also just getting started,” Wadud says as we load the bags of apples onto her bike and head off to our next Berkeley foraging location: a house on Derby Street with an Asian pear tree and grapes.

Wadud has been busy the past five months. What started as a few donating households and leisurely harvesting dates with her friends has exploded into an expansive network of fruit “pledged” and ready to be picked. Since July, Forage Oakland added over fifty households to its roster and now boasts about eighty fruit tree locations.

A core group of five volunteers, most of whom also work at Chez Panisse where Wadud bartends, are responsible for harvesting, sorting and redistributing the bags of fruit. Everything is picked by hand, and most harvesting missions are completed by bike. “It is a small handful of us, volunteering our time without pay,” Wadud says. “But it really does bring me so much joy, and I can honestly say that there is little that makes me feel as happy as eating a fresh plum, just harvested by my own hands.”

The recognition Forage Oakland has received over the last two months also tastes pretty sweet. On August 29, at the Slow Food Nation extravaganza in San Francisco, Wadud displayed and served (I am double checking that Asiya actually served the foraged fruit. She wrote that it was enjoyed by the dinner guests, which I took to mean eaten, but I called her today to clarify.) foraged fruit at the 500-person dinner. The next day she picked pounds of Meyer lemons, elderberries, blackberries and oranges to make jam and preserves for Jam Jam, a Slow Food Nation-sponsored event. Over thirty people converged at 18 Reasons, a gallery in the Mission district of San Francisco, to prep, cook, and can nearly 100 jars of jam and preserves. Also, since September 5, Wadud’s hand-made foraging maps have been on display at Urban Inventions, a design and architecture show that seeks to re-imagine the urban landscape of San Francisco.

For Wadud, the early success of Forage Oakland proves that people not only appreciate the barter program, but are also seeking to reexamine their relationship with food. She hopes that the increasing visibility of her organization can help reconnect people to their neighborhoods, the growing seasons, and encourage Bay Area residents to be more intentional about what they consume and why. Eating, Wadud says, is political.

“I think there can be a serious disconnect between our food, who cultivated it, how it was harvested, and the resources that went in to it finally appearing on our plates,” Wadud explains. “Forage Oakland is a simple project that takes out the extraneous steps and demystifies the process. It is simple: produce is foraged from a backyard of a Forage Oakland member; I notify you of its harvest; you consume it; and you thank your neighbor for making their produce available to you.”

For more information and photos: www.forageoakland.blogspot.com