The EcoCenter at Herons Head Park is San Francisco's landmark Environmental Education Center devoted to teaching visitors about green building solutions with an emphasis on Environmental Justice to reflect its location in one of the most historically polluted communities in the region. Through demonstration, the center educates visitors around two of the most critical environmental themes facing California today: Water and Energy.
The center is the first carbon neutral building in the southern city featuring an array of cutting edge green building solutions. The buiding site is former Pier 98, located on 23 acres that juts into the bay and features over 100 bird species and San Francisco's largest freshwater wetlands system. The EcoCenter Project is a community designed initiative which has, over the last ten years of its incubation, integrated the voices of hundreds of community members with a particular emphasis on youth. It represents a critical effort by a community that has experienced great environmental distress by dozens of polluting industries, by an unresponsive utilitie companies, and by decades of irresponsible land use planning. San Francisco's Bayview Hunterstpoint, located on San Francisco's Southern Waterfront, shoulders the burden of treating 85% of all of San Francisco's Sewage (as well as 100% of Brisbane's, and 20% of Daly City's), and has played host to two of SF's largest, oldest, and dirtiest power plants, is the home of the city's only Superfund Site, the Naval Shipyard, and is home to a population with over 30% under the age of 18. The majority of their community members are people of color (mostly AfricanAmerican, Asian, and Latino, and in that order in terms of numbers) and are living under the city's median income range.
The EcoCenter's objective is to educate visitors about the critical importance of green building, water and energy efficiency, and sustainability by modeling innovative low impact design (LID) solutions. Through the implementation of low impact landscape solutions, the center's collection and treatment systems will reduce input from, and output to the City's central water and treatment collection system, reducing dependency on the city’s potable water supply, thereby providing a critical conservation demonstration project for visitors of the center. The demonstration scale systems will provide critical educational resource to visitors of the park and of the center. Systems include:
- 15,000 gallon rainwater catchment system for primary plumbing of toilets and site irrigation.
- Riparian Vegetative roof for storm water retention, thermal massing, and encouraging habitat biodiversity.
- On-site waste water treatment system treating all building sewage and grey water for reuse in on-site subsurface irrigation zone through five different waste treatment methodologies including an interior constructed wetlands system.
- Drought tolerant landscaping irrigated with building storm water and grey water supply via subsurface irrigation zones.
- 100% stand alone photovoltaic solar energy array providing all building energy supply—with no utility tie-in.
- Solar Thermal system providing all building heating supply
- Structural Insulated Panel System featuring high R-value for insulation and envelope efficiency
The project was recently voted San Francisco's Best Trip Back to the Primitive Future 2010 in the SFWEEKLY and will be featured in Pasaden's Museum of Art Action/Reaction.
Recent coverage of the center includes:
A-Green-Building-Grows-in-an-Unlikely-Neighborhood
Grand Opening at Heron's Head Park EcoCenter
For general questions on project and tours please contact Laurie Schoeman, Project Manager at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or 415.282.6840
