Saving the Bay?

In 1946, the San Francisco Bay Bridge wasn't even 10 years old and the traffic was already terrible. Planners proposed many solutions. Most of those involved building another bridge. None seemed effective.

Enter our nutty cousin, John.

He came to California in 1907, planning to be a teacher. But instead became an actor, director, and writer. He wrote tragedies and then “threw in a couple of custard pies” for laughs. For 20 years he made his living writing and directing plays in California. He produced more than 300 performances in sixty towns. Governor Hiram Johnson said John knew more people than anyone else in California. John believed show business prepared him to create his grand plan, “the greatest pageant on earth.”

He thought the bay was “a geographic mistake”. He was upset that the bay caused the transcontinental railroad to end in Oakland instead of San Francisco. John spent the rest of his life promoting his idea, the “Reber Plan”.

John had no engineering training.

The basis of his plan included two enormous earth-filled dams that would block off the entire north and south bay. One dam would be where the Bay Bridge is, and the other where the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge is.

This would create two giant lakes that would store more water than double the capacity of Lake Shasta. Only 15% of the bay waters would be open to the ocean.

The tops of the dams would be used for rail and auto traffic. He envisioned a 36-lane highway on the causeway with four main railroad lines on either side. At the east end of the causeway, nine, atomic-bomb-proof tunnels would take traffic under a shipping channel. But that's not all. The freshwater lakes would change the weather — warm days would become cooler and cool days warmer.

That's right. John Reber not only intended to terraform geography, he also promised to change the climate.

In 1933, he met with Herbert Hoover, who proclaimed the Reber Plan “the most complete proposal for the bay.” Hoover’s endorsement gave the project credibility and publicity. In 1935, Reber began promoting the plan full-time. In 1940, he put a model on display at the world’s fair.

As time went on, he added other elements: an aqueduct, an airport, and a high-speed freeway to Los Angeles, naval bases, fuel storage in the caves created by excavation, and evacuation routes in the event of atomic attack.

Finally persuaded, Congress funded a study of the project. In 1957 The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of a giant, hydraulic model of the bay, in a hangar in Sausalito, to evaluate the proposal. In 1960, researchers began running simulations on the model.

The results overwhelmingly concluded that the plan was “infeasible by any frame of reference.” The lakes would overflow in late winter, evaporate in summer, water levels would fall dramatically, and they would become severely polluted. Ecosystems would be disturbed and destroyed. Tides would be so violent they would disrupt navigation.

The Reber plan would have been an epic billion-dollar disaster.

Our cousin, John Wellman Reber never knew; he had died in 1957.

In 1961, three women started “Save the Bay”, a movement to preserve San Francisco Bay. Armed with the results of the bay model, it turned out to be one of the most successful efforts at environmental activism in American history.

Today, the Bay Model is no longer used for research, but it still operates as an educational facility at the Bay Model Visitors Center in Sausalito.

As I see it, John Reber, saved the San Francisco Bay. Indirectly, in his attempt to fill it with dirt, choke it off from the delta, and destroy it. But hey, pobody’s nerfect.