I’m pleased and honored that the Friends of the Pinole Creek Watershed has linked to my blog so prominently! For those of you just finding Creek Running North through FOPCW, welcome. Despite what it looks like the last few days, I do write about the creek fairly often, when I’m not ranting about politics or wishing I was in the Mojave Desert.

You can read some things I’ve written on our little creek here, here, here, and here. And there’s more: feel free to poke around.

I guess this is as good a time as any to link to a few web pages describing environmental issues in the Pinole Creek neighborhood. The Briones Hills Preserve Alliance is a good example: they’re fighting a large cemetery planned for the upper reaches of the watershed, up at Bear Creek and Hampton roads. The last thing the creek needs is that much lawn up there, with all the attendant runoff and pesticides usually used to maintain cemeteries, not to mention the traffic. Can you imagine getting stuck behind a funeral procession on Bear Creek Road? Not me.

The Clark Project page describes a planned development one valley south of Pinole, in El Sobrante along San Pablo Creek. The development, which would butt up against Wildcat Canyon Park, would probably mean the end of the world’s largest Sargent Cypress.

Save Franklin Canyon’s web site is a good place for updates on planned developments in that rugged landscape just north of Hercules, where John Muir once sauntered with the wild cats.

And speaking of Muir, the Muir Heritage Land Trust is doing stellar work to buy up the old ranches on Franklin Ridge, protecting them from development for future generations to enjoy, especially once the San Francisco Bay Area Ridge Trail alignment through there gets figured out. (Here’s one possibility for a route, courtesy my friend David Loeb’s magazine Bay Nature.)

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   FOPCW 2005 02 10 at 6:16:44 am

   Hello hello!

   Our new website’s just shy of a month old, but we’ve made great progress thanks to the contributions of many members of our group.  In the coming months, we’ll be adding maps, historical information, and plenty of other related resources.  I urge your readers or anyone else interested in learning more about Pinole Creek and its watershed to check back often.