SF fuel dock played key role in bay rescue but its future is uncertain

During the emergency response Tuesday after a pleasure boat carrying 20 people capsized and sank in San Francisco Bay, the Gashouse Cove fuel dock at the San Francisco Marina played an important role.

Seven of the 11 emergency vessels involved in the response refueled at the facility in the marina's East Harbor, according to its operator, Chrissy Kaplan. She said ambulance crews used the dock's gangway to bring ashore 16 people who were rescued and another person who was pulled from the water but later died. Crews transferred them to a flat staging area above Gashouse Cove's underground fuel tanks before taking those who needed medical care to hospitals. Three people remained missing Wednesday.

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The operation, Kaplan said, demonstrated how Gashouse Cove functions as an emergency hub for agencies including the U.S. Coast Guard and San Francisco's police and fire departments. 

But that dock, the northern waterfront's only operating marine fuel station, faces an uncertain future as the city launches a major makeover of the East Harbor.

The Marina Improvement and Remediation Project, put forth this spring by the Recreation and Park Department, will transform the cove opposite the Marina Safeway into a 5-acre waterfront park - beginning with a major remediation project by PG&E to clean up toxic waste from a 19th-century power plant that gave Gashouse Cove its name. That work is scheduled to start in May 2027 and be completed in December 2028. 

During that 18-month period, the fuel dock will go offline, Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for Rec and Park, confirmed Wednesday.

Kaplan argues that the Gashouse Cove dock can remain open during remediation, supplying its crucial emergency service.    

"This is not an amenity to some marina," Kaplan said Wednesday. "This is an essential asset that the city of San Francisco needs, proved yesterday by the unobstructed access of first responders on land to the first responders on the water. 

"We don't need another park," she said. "We need this venue to keep our bay safe."

Aparton said police and fire rescue operations will continue from the West Harbor, where rescue boats and jet skis are already based. 

Kaplan said that plan is unworkable because there is no system for getting the fuel to the West Harbor and no way to replace the current fueling system, with tanks under the pavement adjacent to the parking lot outside Fort Mason.

That paved area, which is always kept clear of vehicles, serves as a Maritime Incident Command Center, as it did on Tuesday. Capt. Maggie Hallahan, a private boat skipper licensed by the Coast Guard to carry paying passengers, saw the rescue operation unfold from the Sea Scout Base on the east side of Fort Mason and later from Gashouse Cove.

"When an accident happens, this particular fuel dock is set up perfectly for a maritime emergency, like the one that happened yesterday," said Hallahan, who serves on the California Boating and Waterways Commission and the Harbor Safety Committee of the San Francisco Bay Region. "Having that location and having the incident command center set up there" probably saved lives, she said. 

Hallahan said an independent study confirmed that the area in need of remediation by PG&E is 167 meters from the fuel dock, which would not get in the way of the cleanup project. 

That finding prompted the Harbor Safety Committee to formally ask that the fuel dock at Gashouse Cove be kept open and operating during the entire PG&E project.

The committee made that request in a letter June 17 to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), which is responsible for issuing a permit for the cleanup project. 

"The proposed removal of the Gashouse Cove fuel dock raises concerns about emergency preparedness, navigation safety, maritime resiliency, and public access to San Francisco Bay," read the letter, signed by Scott Humphrey, chairman of the Harbor Safety Committee. 

The letter noted that Gashouse Cove is the only "touch and go" dock on the northern San Francisco waterfront and that the San Francisco Police Department, Fire Department and U.S. Coast Guard all rely on it during emergencies. It is also crucial to the operations of the San Francisco Bar Pilots, who navigate ships into the bay's nine ports. 

The letter listed several examples of marina remediation projects that have been completed while working around essential services like fuel docks and requested that the BCDC exercise its authority by requiring the fuel dock at Gashouse Cove remain open during the remediation project and thereafter. 

The emergency response to Tuesday's boat sinking reinforced the point, Kaplan said.

"Connecting the dots between the tragic boat accident yesterday and the role our dock played in the retrieval, triage, search and general access to the water's edge is undeniable," she said. 

In a June 24 response to the Harbor Safety Committee, BCDC wrote that the permit request from Rec and Park and PG&E was incomplete, so any action would be premature. A public hearing would be required before BCDC could vote on issuing the permit. BCDC spokesperson Rylan Gervase said the hearing might be scheduled in October, if the application is complete by then. 

In the interim, the Port of San Francisco is working with Rec and Park to re-establish a fuel dock currently offline at the Hyde Street Harbor, about 1.5 miles east of Gashouse Cove on the other side of Fort Mason, according to Aparton. The hope is that the project, called the Hyde Street Harbor Fuel Dock, will be online by June 2027, when Gashouse Cove is scheduled to go offline to make way for the remediation project. The Port of San Francisco will address the Hyde Street proposal at its September meeting, Aparton said.

To ensure there is no interruption in fuel service, Aparton also said the private operator of the Hyde Street dock has promised to offer gasoline service by tanker truck at Pier 45 until that dock is operational. Pier 45 is less than two miles from Gashouse Cove.  

A spokesperson for PG&E referred a request for comment to Rec and Park, which said it was still gathering information late Wednesday afternoon. Spokespersons for the San Francisco Fire Department did not respond to requests for comment.  

According to Hallahan, Hyde Street Harbor is congested and poorly located in the middle of Fisherman's Wharf, making it impractical for an emergency command center. West Harbor is a congested and unnecessarily expensive option, she said.

"The determination of the mariners is that clearly the Gashouse Cove dock can stay operational and cost no money to the city of San Francisco because it doesn't need any work," Hallahan said. "It doesn't need to be changed. It needs to stay the same."

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