Alameda is accepting the 21st century challenge to create a city that is healthy, inclusive and resilient. Some challenges the Island City faces include traffic, high housing costs, aging infrastructure and increasingly, the impacts of climate change. Alamedans have experienced three major wildfire smoke incidents in the last 15 months, including weeks of unhealthy air quality due to the recent Camp Fire. Less visibly, the San Francisco Bay is gradually rising, threatening our shoreline parks, businesses and homes.
Alameda Police Department’s (APD) Crime Prevention Technician Michaelia Parker, left, spoke with local businessman Tom Bierly during last Tuesday morning’s Coffee with a Cop at the West End Starbucks. Parker staffs APD’s crime-prevention unit, C.O.P.P.S., which stands for Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving. The coffee klatsch offered residents the opportunity to speak with police officers, ask them questions and voice their concerns about crime in the city.
Ocean Cleanup (OC) announced on New Year’s Eve that it has shut down its experiment to collect debris from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (GPGP) — a mass of refuse and debris known as a gyre. OC said that “structural malfunctioning of the cleanup system” has forced the company to return to Alameda earlier than planned.
“We will set sail as soon as an appropriate weather window is available,” OC stated.
Alameda Pipe-a-thon 2018 ‘takes the fifth’ against cancer
For the fifth New Year’s Eve in a row, the Alameda Pipe-a-thon hit the bars of the Island City, with Scottish ex-pat and Alameda resident Andy MacKay playing “Auld Lang Syne” on the bagpipes in 21 bars and restaurants on the Island. In the process, he raised just shy of $5,000 for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
MacKay was accompanied again by Team Pipe-a-thon, including “Jake and Elwood Blues” (Joe and Jamie, in kilts) along with Rod, Tony, Feargal and Bruno “The Pipe-mobile Drivers.”
The Navy is nearing completion of plans for a cleanup area called Site 32, 60 acres that lie on the old airfield west of the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. The site requires remediation because investigators uncovered radium-226 there. The Navy mixed radium-226, a naturally occurring mineral, with paint to allow dials and markers to glow in the dark. Repeated exposure to high levels of radium can cause cancer.
