Living near the Bay is a shared experience: respect for our common environment shapes our view of the Bay as much as do bike rides, salt air, and heron spotting. The Bay is a national treasure almost too good to be true, and now agribusiness giant Cargill, Inc. wants a piece of it.

Cargill spends its spare time deforesting the Amazon, razing rain forest in the Pacific, and sending poisonous grain seeded with Methylmercury to Basra, Iraq. But overseas havoc-wreaking can be tiring, and Cargill is looking to settle down.

Cargill and its partner DMB Associates have decided to build a home on some nice, restorable salt ponds on the San Francisco Bay. Well, not just one home. More like 12,000 homes.

There was a time when the San Francisco Bay was treated as a trash dump and a real estate opportunity. Over 90% of our marshes were diked off or filled, reducing the size of the Bay by one third. In the 1960s, developers even wanted to dump the top of San Bruno mountain in the Bay to make room for new houses. If you think that's absurd, get this: Cargill wants to build houses on liquefaction-prone bay mud between two earthquake faults in a state still expecting the Big One.

In addition to threatening consumers' safety, Cargill's plans threaten jobs at Redwood City's port and promise an influx of traffic on Highway 101. Cargill has shown itself to be susceptible to pressure: in 2006, Cargill enacted a two-year moratorium on purchase of soy beans from newly deforested land. Show Cargill we mean business before it does the damage - sign the petition below right now!

[photo credit nzdave on Flickr - actual photo of Redwood City SF Bay coast]