And Lozeau didn't even have the stones to send a representative to the supervisors' hearing.
He and BayKeeper took the biggest duck of them all. And here is why I say that: In 1997, BayKeeper threatened to sue the Giants over inadequate environmental studies of the stadium site, which inaccurately characterized the toxic condition of the land. The rest of the environmental community in San Francisco stood down, allowing BayKeeper to take the lead on watchdogging the Giants. It was a role the group had asked for.
Yet Lozeau was caught totally by surprise when the Giants applied to the state to have their dirt mountain reclassified into nonhazardous waste. And he did precious little after he found out about the reclassification, except, evidently, plan his trip to Spain. I called him a couple of times over the last two weeks, and he was always 10 steps behind other environmentalists in tracking the Giants' toxic dirt disposal ploy.
Lozeau was caught unaware because he and his lawyers capitulated to the Giants in 1997. In its settlement agreement with the Giants, made public this week after a confidentiality agreement expired, BayKeeper failed to win a provision requiring that it be informed of future environmental problems at the stadium.
Reed Super, one of BayKeeper's lawyers, says the Giants adamantly refused to accept any such provision. "The Giants and the city just didn't want BayKeeper involved," Super says. "Getting BayKeeper involved was just another seat at the table, and that was just not going to happen."
So BayKeeper struck an extremely weak agreement, took some money, and walked away.
And when the Giants' audacious dirt-dumping activities came to light through the happenstance intervention of other environmental groups, BayKeeper went into hiding.
Lozeau left for a three-week vacation to Spain, apparently purposefully cutting himself off from BayKeeper staff. "He didn't want any of us reaching him," says Marsha Mather-Thrift, BayKeeper's development director.
As Lozeau was sunning himself in Spain, the rest of the environmental community was flailing around trying to make the most of the opportunity Ammiano had given them by calling the hearing.
"I was hoping [Lozeau] would send at least one [BayKeeper] board member," says Mike Thomas, an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment. "It would have been nice to hear from him about his settlement with the Giants, but he just took off."
Thomas' comments were echoed by other environmentalists last week.
I, too, was puzzled. Why would Lozeau split town at the most critical moment, the one and probably only opportunity to hold the Giants accountable and put other developers on notice that slippery waste-disposal schemes carry a political and (just maybe) a legal price tag?
But then I turned to the cash contributions page of BayKeeper's most recent federal tax return, and found something that might explain the environmental group's inaction in regard to the San Francisco Giants.
In 1997 -- the same year the group threatened to sue the Giants, but settled the case at bargain-basement rates -- BayKeeper received its largest single contribution, $70,000, from Richard N. Goldman, through his private philanthropic foundation, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund. Richard N. Goldman is one of the owners of the San Francisco Giants.
Watching the Giants, the DTSC, and Waste Management turn on each other like common criminals did not surprise me. As I said earlier, I enjoyed the spectacle.
Watching the supervisors go miles out of their way to let the Giants off the hook also did not surprise me. Letting the wealthy and connected off the hook is what San Francisco supervisors specialize in.
But watching BayKeeper drop the ball, allowing the Giants to score without even a throw to the plate -- that surprised me. And finding out that the environmental group had taken a large payment from a partner in the Giants, and then continued to "monitor" the team's environmental activities -- that shocked me.
I hope Michael Lozeau faces a good round of questioning from other environmentalists when he gets back from Spain later this month. And I'm not talking about whether he prefers Castilian over Catalonian cuisine.
George Cothran (gcothran@sfweekly.com) can be reached at SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco,
