A.M. Splash: Susan G. Komen Controversy Hurting Breast Cancer Walk Participation

The Board of Supervisors will have a chance to take a mulligan Tuesday on their June decision to give a pricey planned waterfront development a break on the city’s height limit. The 8-3 vote didn’t sit well with neighbors and local activists, who collected more than 31,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot that would dump the proposed 136-foot height limit for the 8 Washington condo project across the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building.

The last time Alice Heiman participated in the Susan G. Komen walk in San Francisco to raise money for breast cancer, she gathered a group of friends and made a big trip from her home in Reno to support a cause close to her heart. This year, though, nine months after the national organization sparked outrage when it refused to fund Planned Parenthood, she's ignoring donation requests that keep popping up in her inbox and has no plans for a return trip. She's not alone. Just days before Sunday's 5k Race for the Cure along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, registration is down about 50 percent from last year. Donations to the local chapter are down as well, nearly 65 percent, to $76,000 so far this year compared with $212,000 at this time last year.

...At Supervisor David Campos' urging, the Board of Supervisors is expected to hold a hearing this month or next on businesses, primarily restaurants, that levy a surcharge on customers' bills to pay for Healthy San Francisco, but pocket some of the money themselves. Campos has asked that the district attorney investigate the surcharges on the grounds they may amount to consumer fraud.

You can't swim or boat in Crystal Springs Reservoir because it's the drinking water source for more than a million people, yet illegal pot farms in the rugged land above the water might be a bigger threat than skinny-dippers. Last week authorities pulled 7,200 pounds of trash left behind by illicit marijuana growers off the steep hillsides that funnel rain and creek water into the reservoir. Among the car batteries and black plastic irrigation tubes authorities carted out by helicopter were toxic pesticides that have been banned from the United States.

City College of San Francisco has been scrutinized by accreditors for weak leadership and poor financial planning in recent months, and now the troubled college is facing off with the state’s pension system for public teachers. A recent audit by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System found that for nearly two decades, the college has signed up administrators who were never legally eligible for pension benefits.

Here in the East Bay...the post-Labor Day start of the campaign season is voluminous -- 11 state measures, 568 candidates vying for everything from Congress to the Bethel Island Municipal Improvement District, a 144-page state ballot pamphlet and 38 local ballot questions of which most are pleas for money. What's hot and what's not?

Most of the heavily traveled two- to four-lane road between Interstate 80 and Highway 101 is only 1 to 2 feet above sea level. Caltrans says it has the lowest elevations of any Bay Area highway and some portions passing through marshes even dip well below that. And that, plus worsening traffic congestion, are why state and environmental groups are so concerned that parts of Highway 37 could some day disappear under water due to such natural events as rising ocean levels and earthquakes.