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As early as next year, people will finally be able to walk the salt ponds and marshes just north of Moffett Field from Sunnyvale to Shoreline Park, a Bay Trail spokesperson said Friday.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for South Bay residents,” said Laura Thompson, project manager of San Francisco Bay Trail <0x2014> an offshoot of the Association of Bay Area Governments which strives to connect the trail throughout the region. “This is a gap that many people have been working on for many years. I can’t tell you how excited we are.”
The news came as the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project released its environmental impact report this week, another step towards the largest salt pond restoration project on the West Coast <0x2014> a $1 billion, 50-year project to restore 16,500 acres of former Cargill salt ponds throughout the Bay Area. The environmental impacts of several Bay Trail gaps were studied as part of the report.
Archival records show that there were informal trails in the area above Moffett Field up until 1999, when Cargill closed off the area. When the salt ponds were sold by the company in 2003, it presented an opportunity to reopen a formal trail, but the route was too close to munitions storage at Moffett Field.
“We are working with them [NASA] on moving the munitions,” Thompson told the
The environmental impact report for the final project will be complete this fall, Thompson added. “There’s not much to designing this trail,” she said. “This could be open in 2008.”
Not everyone is as excited about the new trail, however. One potentially problematic aspect is the impact human activity could have on wildlife and plants in previously closed areas.
A case in point is the western pond turtle, a state and federal “species of concern” which was thought to be locally extinct until 1999, when it was found in the ponds and channels adjacent to Moffett Field’s northern edge.
“It does scare me that this area will be opened to the public,” said NASA wildlife biologist Chris Alderete, who discussed the rare turtle in a presentation about wildlife management at a Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board meeting last week.
“I want the trail, but this is one of the places not opened to humans. … There’s been little access over the years,” Alderete said.
One of the western pond turtle’s biggest threats are humans, who in the past have snatched them up to be taken home as pets. The introduction of non-native species, including other turtles, to their habitat has also hurt their numbers.
NASA found more than 50 of the rare turtles while removing contaminated soil from a channel in the area. The turtles survived a temporary relocation to the golf course pond nearby.
In the 193-page section of the report dealing with impacts to wildlife, the turtle is said to be “uncommon along the inshore side of Pond A3W” at Moffett Field. The report also says the turtle “May occur rarely in freshwater and brackish creeks and sloughs elsewhere in the study area.”
Other area species at risk, identified by NASA, include the western burrowing owl, the salt marsh harvest mouse and the California clapper rail.
Another controversial aspect of the project is the possible consequence for several bird species that have made a home in the salt ponds. It is undecided how many salt ponds will revert to marshland, but the percentage will be somewhere between 50 and 90 percent, according to the environmental impact report. The Mountain View areas to be restored are part of the Alviso restoration complex, which includes 7,363 acres of salt ponds and 1,607 acres of marshes.
Mountain View wetlands to be restored include the areas between the mouths of the Adobe, Permanente and Stevens creeks in Shoreline Park.
Anyone wishing to comment on the environmental impact report has until April 23. Comments can be made online at the Restoration Project’s Web site (details below) or mailed to:
Clyde Morris, USFWS
Don Edwards San Francisco Bay NWR
9500 Thornton Ave.
Newark, CA 94560.
A public hearing will be held March 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Moffett Field in the Eagle Room of Building 943, just outside the main gate.
For more on the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, or to read the environmental impact report, visit www.southbayrestoration.org. For more on the Bay Trail, visit http://baytrail.abag.ca.gov.
