Good news & bad news: Damon Slough & MTC

Blogging’s been a bit light here lately because I’ve been super busy and I was in Chicago last week for a much-needed vacation. I’ve been working on a long blog post (or possibly series of blog posts) about the County’s Measure B transportation reauthorization plan, but you’ll have to wait until next week for that. In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of updates on issues I’ve blogged about – Damon Slough and the MTC headquarters relocation.

I’ll start with the bad (though unsurprising) news. The MTC voted last Wednesday to purchase 390 Main Street in San Francisco for their headquarters. Here’s a report from Joyce Roy:

Vote for Save the Bay to adopt Damon Slough

Every year Save the Bay identifies Bay Area trash hot spots – sites around the Bay that have high levels of trash. They release a report about these spots so you might have read about them in local newspapers. But this year, they’re going a step further. Anyone can vote for one of the five Bay Trash Hot Spots, and Save the Bay will organize volunteer clean ups at the winning site throughout 2012.

One of the five sites is Oakland’s Damon Slough. My initial reaction to seeing that was, huh, what’s a slough? And where is that? My second reaction was to vote for it because it’s in Oakland. Then, I did a little research.

A slough is a swamp or a creek, in this case one that drains into the Bay. If you’ve ever been to the Coliseum, you’ve certainly passed over Damon Slough, whether from BART or from the parking lot. Here’s an image from Google Maps: