San Francisco had long been the major business and financialcapital of the Western states, but it had been challenged sinceWorld War I1 by Los Angeles and, in the mid-1950's, was barelyholding its own against explosive growth in Southern California.Probably as fundamental a motivation as any behind BART wasthe desire to keep "The City" as attractive to corporate headquar-ters, financial institutions, and upper-middle-class residents as ittraditionally had been. Of course, those with personal economicinterests in the central district were especially keen to promoteBART

The idea that San Francisco might go the way of Newark or St.Louis was utterly abhorrent

germane

BART Impact Program is carefully watch-ing a wide array of potential consequences, under the sponsor-ship of the Department of Transportation and the Department ofHousing and Urban Development, with the local MetropolitanTransportation Commission in the key research and managementrole

BART began carrying passengers in Sep-tember 1972

The average Bay Area commuter lives15.8 miles from his job; by comparison, Los Angeles commutersare only 8.9 miles away, Chicago commuters 6.6 miles, Philadel-phia commuters 4.4 miles.)

In contrast, wetland plants possess adaptations to keep oxygen flowing to the rootswhere much respiration occurs

In the early days, hydrology, especiallythe presence of surface water, was their defining characteristic as it was critical tosupport natural resources associated with food, waterfowl, and fish. In the twentiethcentury, wetlands were mostly recognized for their biological productivity. The breed-ing grounds of waterfowl or duck “factories” of the upper Mississippi River and theprairie pothole region of the US and Canada spurred the purchase and protection offreshwater wetlands by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) (http://www.fws.gov) and Ducks Unlimited (http://www.ducks.org). Wetlands also were importantto the fur industry with the harvest of beaver, muskrat, and nutria. It was much laterthat wetlands became recognized for other reasons: their high levels of nongame bio-logical production, ability to cleanse water by trapping pollutants, sequester carbon,maintain high levels of biodiversity, and more.

delineated