On April 25, 2018, Brightline’s executive director Eddie Ahn was appointed by the Speaker of the State Assembly, Anthony Rendon, to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), a state planning and regulatory agency with regional authority over the San Francisco Bay Area. BCDC was created in 1965 and is the nation’s oldest coastal zone agency.
BCDC’s mission is to protect and enhance the San Francisco Bay and to encourage the Bay’s responsible use for generations. In addition to determining responsible development, the Commission is tasked with requiring maximum feasible public access within the Bay’s 100-foot shoreline band. More recently, BCDC leads the Bay Area’s ongoing multi-agency regional effort to address the impacts of rising sea level on shoreline communities and assets.
The Commission itself is comprised of appointees from a broad range of state and local stakeholders, including the Governor, the Legislature, governments within the nine Bay Area counties, as well as multiple state agencies such as the California Business and Transportation Agency, the California Department of Finance, the California Resources Agency, the California State Lands Commission, and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. There are also appointees from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Brightline Defense is a public policy nonprofit dedicated to environmental justice issues, and Eddie Ahn also serves on the San Francisco Commission on the Environment. In 2017, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission voted to initiate an amendment to address social equity and environmental justice issues within the San Francisco Bay Plan, and more work remains to be done on these issues in the future.