Radio Pieces

Environmental groups say the threat of sea level rise makes Redwood City’s Bayside salt flats the last place to build low-lying homes for 27,000 new residents, but developers say they’ll simply create taller levees. Second in a two-part radio series in partnership with Bay Area News Group.

How do you plan for something you can’t predict? That’s the question facing developers of San Francisco’s Treasure Island as they grapple with a variety future of sea level rise projections. First in a two-part radio series in partnership with Bay Area News Group.

How so we solve the nitrate problem? Listeners call in to KQED’s Forum with suggestions and concerns. Julia Scott and Sasha Khokha, Central Valley Bureau Chief with KQED, discuss their six-month investigative collaboration to draw attention to the issue of nitrates in groundwater.

The California gull population in the San Francisco Bay Area has increased by 900 percent since the birds began breeding on bayside salt ponds in 1980. Fueled by easy access to trash at local landfills and parking lots, their unnatural population growth has placed neighboring waterbird species in peril, according to biologists.

For the San Francisco Bay Area, a secure water future means thinking big – including a giant new tunnel to carry water 100 feet below the bottom of the Bay. Parts of the system that supply water to 2.5 million residents are nearly 100 years old – and fixing them won’t come cheap, as locals are soon to discover.