|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Conservation groups, community members, and officials from federal, state and local agencies gathered on Friday morning to celebrate the transformation of a 435-acre salt pond into a tidal marsh just north of Mountain View’s Shoreline Park.
The local project is just one small part of the largest wetland restoration effort on the West Coast, which aims to return portions of California’s bayshore back to its natural state. Mountain View City Council member Pat Showalter, a civil engineer who previously worked on the salt pond project management team at Valley Water, addressed the crowd at the Feb. 20 event, highlighting the years of complex work it took “to provide wonderful habitat for people and for wildlife.”
“We should be very proud of this accomplishment, and also, we should take great pleasure as time goes on, watching it develop into a marsh,” said Showalter, as the crowd looked out over the water. “It’s going to be such a beautiful part of the city of Mountain View.”
As part of the multi-year transformation of the pond formally known as A2W, crews repaired eroding levees, built five habitat islands for wildlife and added 1.2 miles of publicly accessible trails. Construction on the pond wrapped up at the end of January, and is estimated to have cost about $20 million.
Restoring tidal marshes comes with many benefits, including aiding in the recovery of threatened species, removing carbon from the atmosphere and protecting nearby areas from storm surges, Dave Halsing, executive project manager of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, told the Voice.
Now that construction on pond A2W is complete, it’s nature’s turn to do some work. As the tide comes in each day, it will bring with it sediment and seeds that will settle at the bottom of the pond, develop and grow, eventually creating a marsh, Halsing said.
In less than a decade, the pond will be a “full, vibrant marsh on the edge of the Bay, providing wildlife and habitat benefits,” said Chris Barr, the acting complex manager for the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
Restoring the Bay to its natural state
Though marshes were once a ubiquitous habitat in the San Francisco Bay Area, decades of urbanization and industrial salt harvesting led to the loss of about 85% of that land, according to the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. This caused the rapid decline of marsh-dependent species and a decrease in local water quality.
In 2003, the federal government paid $100 million to acquire 15,100 acres of land around the San Francisco Bay Area from Cargill Salt, the main commercial operator of local salt ponds. Since then, several agencies have collaborated with environmental groups to transform about one-third of those ponds, converting some into deep and shallow bodies of water for birds and restoring others into tidal marshes.
The success of the project in Mountain View will be measured over the next several years using metrics including sediment accretion rates, water quality and wildlife usage, Halsing said.
Plans to restore Mountain View’s wetlands go beyond just the transformation of A2W. They also include a 275-acre pond to its west called A1. While rehabilitation work on A1 isn’t expected to start for a few more years, the result of the project will be “one big marsh,” with about 700 acres of connected wetland, Halsing previously told the Voice.
Showalter noted that wetlands absorb a lot of wave activity and serve as “incredible physical barriers against sea level rise,” which State Assemblymember Marc Berman, who also spoke at Friday’s event, said is a major concern for both the coastal and bayside communities he represents.
Berman, whose district includes Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto, noted that an undertaking like the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project takes perseverance and patience, adding that it’s exciting to be “one pond closer to the completion of this long term effort.”
Interesting way to spend money when there is a housing crisis, amirite?
Nice to see this progress.
Great news, eager to watch the marsh return to its natural state.