Climate Conversations Recap: A First Look at Mountain View

The Bay Area faces some of the highest sea level rise risk in California. It also has one of the best tools to protect our communities: nature. On Thursday, July 23, Save The Bay and our partners took a deep dive into the large-scale restoration work happening around the Bay Area, including our newest project in Mountain View.

Jessie Olson, Save The Bay’s Habitat Restoration Director, was joined by Dave Halsing of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, David O’Connell of EnviroMend Group, and Councilmember Pat Showalter of the City of Mountain View. Together, they explored what it takes to bring these projects to life: funding, partnerships, science, and years of patient work.

Whether you joined us live or missed the conversation, here’s a recap with the full recording, a closer look at Mountain View, and answers to your questions.

Watch the Recording

If you couldn’t make it, or want to share the discussion with family or friends, the full recording is here.

Your Questions, Answered

Our community came to the webinar with great questions. Here are the answers, straight from the people doing the work.

Mountain View A2W Project

How did the transaction with Cargill come about? How was it funded, and was Cargill willing to sell?

• It was a voluntary sale from Cargill to the USFWS and CDFW, at a price of $100 million. Of that, $72 million was from the State Wildlife Conservation Board, $8 million was from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and $20 million was from the Hewlett, Packard, and Moore Foundations and the Goldman Fund. (See also Almost Old Enough to Buy Beer | South Bay Salt Ponds). Then-Senator Dianne Feinstein brokered the deal. (See also Remembering and Thanking Dianne Feinstein | South Bay Salt Ponds.)

What support is the state providing beyond SB1 funds?

• As noted, the State of California funded most of the initial acquisition of the ponds. Also, the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) owns Eden Landing Ecological Reserve, which is about ⅓ of the total area in the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. So CDFW is most deeply involved there. The California State Coastal Conservancy is the primary administrator and funder of the project’s work, managing contracts, giving out grants (both out of their own funds as well as from other federal, state, regional, and private grants), managing the Science Program, and much more. And, of course, a host of state agencies are part of the regulatory processes.

How do you ensure pathogens or other unwanted materials don’t contaminate the soil?

• All material proposed for reuse has to be thoroughly tested and screened for more than 100 different potential contaminants, including pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, as well as naturally occurring metals or asbestos. There is a rigid set of rules for site sample requirements, lab-sensitivity requirements, screening limits, tracking each truckload, reporting, etc. That set of rules was established in coordination with the Water Quality Control Board and Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC).

Did BCDC require mitigation for the fill?

• Neither BCDC nor any other agency required mitigation for any of the fill or other impacts. We had to get permits, of course, and those permits carry certain constraints, limits, and requirements, but none of them asked for compensatory mitigation for a voluntary restoration project that increased the ecological functions and values of the former salt pond by converting it to tidal marsh.

Could this project have moved forward alongside active salt ponds?

• Probably. Cargill still makes salt on more than 10,000 acres, primarily in Newark but also in Redwood City. None of their operations impact our restoration efforts.

What role does EnviroMend play in the project, and why do they donate dirt to restoration efforts like this one?

• The EnviroMend Group is one of several teams of material providers with whom we work to find and bring us clean dirt for fill. These groups, colloquially referred to as ‘dirt brokers’, are construction-trucking-earth management companies who have lines of business in getting rid of excavated material from construction projects.
  
  They donate material to projects like this when it is more cost-effective than taking it to a landfill (where there is a tipping fee to get rid of it) or transporting to other reuse sources farther away. (See also: Our Friend, The Dirt Broker | South Bay Salt Ponds).

Ecological Impact

What are the environmental benefits of these ponds once restored?

• There are many. First, tidal marshes are habitat for a wide range of native plants, fish, birds, mammals, and other wildlife. Many of these species are endangered or threatened and are thus required by law to be protected. Others are less at risk but still facing habitat loss and other threats.
  
  Marsh plants absorb and isolate pollutants and help improve the water quality in the Bay. Those plants also absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and lock it away in their buried roots. Finally, they absorb and disperse the energy of waves and tidal waters as they flow over them. This reduces flood risk and also leads to a reduced need for repairs and maintenance of the levees or other developed infrastructure behind them. (See also: Memo to Self: Remember to Tell People Why Tidal Marsh Restoration Matters | South Bay Salt Ponds.)

Does the restoration include specific plans to help native animal species recover?

• Yes, indeed it does, though not necessarily for the ones you might think of. In terms of marsh restoration, once the pond levees are breached, nature does most of the actual work of delivering sediments and plant propagules (which are something like seeds) to the pond bottoms to settle, take root, and start growing. But that process won’t establish the high ground around the edges. So, Save The Bay and other groups grow plants and install them and their seeds around the upper margins of the marsh (See also: Another Partnership: Save The Bay | South Bay Salt Ponds and A New Technique to Scale Up Our Revegetation Efforts | South Bay Salt Ponds.) Those efforts most directly benefit plants, but we also build things to help birds and fish and other forms of wildlife.
  
  For example, many of our enhanced managed ponds include habitat islands specifically for shorebirds and waterfowl. Other ponds are set aside and improved and enhanced specifically to be dry and ready each spring for use by ground-nesting birds like the Western snowy plover (See also: I Need a Plover | South Bay Salt Ponds). Fish (especially and specifically native fish more than non-natives) benefit from tidal marsh connections with creeks and sloughs and with the branching channel network in highly productive tidal marshes. And marsh birds and terrestrial species (such as the salt marsh harvest mouse) will generally migrate into and become established in marshes once they are mature enough.

How do you make the difficult decisions about which species to prioritize? For example, which bird species will benefit most from a given project, and which won’t?

• It’s a difficult balancing act and not one that can ever be perfect, but we try to do different things for different species or habitats in different places and at different times in the project. So, for example, if we do a lot for snowy plover in one place at one time, and it seems to work okay, we will do less for them and more for other types of bird in the next phase.
  
  And we do this by following several important documents that lay out the framework for making those decisions. Those documents include a Restoration Plan with an Adaptive Management Plan (described and linked to here: The Restoration Project | South Bay Salt Ponds), and a Science Program (The Restoration Project Science Program | South Bay Salt Ponds) with its own set of documents. The Restoration Plan serves as a blueprint for habitat restoration, flood risk management, and the construction of new trails, viewing platforms and other public access along the Bay. The plan was adopted in 2008 after four years of work by a broad range of stakeholders, agency representatives, scientists, and members of the public.

Climate Resilience & Sea Level Rise

Has this project generated quantitative data showing that restored wetlands mitigate sea level rise-driven flooding? Or is this still a pilot?

• This is definitely not a pilot. It’s been underway for over 20 years, and there are many other tidal marsh restoration projects (not necessarily from salt pond conversion) all around the coastal areas of the U.S. and other countries. The importance of tidal marshes in coastal flood protection (including from sea-level rise) has been demonstrated many times. So, we haven’t generated any quantitative data on that particular detail, but we have many examples just in our own project areas where the loss or absence of a marsh triggers increased rates of erosion of levees or other structures. There’s more on this topic in the answer to the next question.

Won’t the marshes and salt ponds eventually be flooded by sea level rise anyway?

• This is an important question with a lot of nuance to it, as well as a lot of scientific uncertainty and ongoing research to keep addressing it. So there are no absolute answers here, but there are some good insights to keep in mind.
  
  With regard first to marshes, the empirical evidence we have and modeling done so far shows that marshes stand a really good chance of keeping pace with sea level rise if they are established prior to mid-century. After that time, the rates of sea-level rise are expected to increase, meaning that some of the in-progress restoring marshes may not keep up and will be “drowned” by the higher seas. However, there are a handful of different ideas for making marshes more resilient, including by increasing the sediment supply by reusing dredge material either directly or indirectly (see, for example, A Slick Strategy for Spiking Sediment Supply* | South Bay Salt Ponds or Remaking the Connections | South Bay Salt Ponds) or by raising pond bottoms, mud flats, or other locations with clean dirt, tunnel material, and stream channels.
  
  With regard to managed ponds, that’s even more difficult. Continuing to raise the height of pond levees to prevent tides from overtopping them would get more expensive and difficult over time. And one would have to make the bases wider to support the added height, which would increase the loss of aquatic habitats and other adverse impacts. This is going to be an ongoing challenge with no clear answers at the current time.
  
  For more details, check out Climate Change and Sea Level Rise | South Bay Salt Ponds, The Next Most Common Question: What Are You Going to Do About Sea Level Rise? | South Bay Salt Ponds, and What Are You Going to Do About Sea Level Rise? Part 2 | South Bay Salt Ponds.

What’s the difference between an armored and an unarmored levee?

• I believe this question arose in reference to the armored levee breaches vs unarmored levee breaches. In almost all cases, we leave the breaches unarmored so that they will continue to erode away, getting larger over time as the tides flow through them. However, we have to armor breaches where we are going to put bridges because we don’t want them to keep eroding, making the breach wider until the bridge collapses. The armoring refers to placing large quarried rock (called rip rap) there to protect the bridge foundation and the levees next to them. One could also armor entire levees to keep them from eroding over time and to reduce the need for (and cost of) future maintenance and repairs.
  
  Another interpretation of “armoring the levee” might relate to re-enforcing the toe of the landfill at Pond A2W. Shoreline Park is built on a closed landfill, so one of the requirements of the Pond A2W restoration is to make sure that the edge of the landfill stays forever buried. That was done with the use of geofabric, rock protection, and then layering the dirt of the horizontal levee over it. The final protection will be the marsh plants.

Broader Bay Vision

Are similar restoration projects happening in other parts of the Bay?

• Yes, too many to name them all, but the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is the largest and among the oldest. One could look at the State Coastal Conservancy’s Bay Program website to see lists of some of the other projects: San Francisco Bay Area – California State Coastal Conservancy.

You mentioned an “arc” of projects — how many more South Bay salt ponds are in the queue for restoration?

• We have 15,000 acres to work with, and when we finish Phase 2 at Mountain View and in Eden Landing, we will have worked on just shy of ½ of them, either restoring them to fully tidal areas that will become marsh or keeping them as ponds and enhancing them for pond-dependent wildlife (by putting in islands and water control structures, for example). Other partner projects are working with us on similar work on ROUGHLY another 4,000 acres. So we will be at about ⅔ of the total project area when those are finished. Still lots to do, but we’ve accomplished a lot. (See also Our Progress | South Bay Salt Ponds for more details).

Are salt ponds in the East Bay being restored too, and is Save The Bay involved there?

• Yes, the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Alameda County is also part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project and Save The Bay has long been involved in that project. There are also similar efforts along parts of the Richmond shoreline and other places in the East Bay that Save The Bay hasn’t been involved in (yet).

How does this project fit into a bigger vision for the entire Bay? Where are we now in that trajectory?

• There are several long-term and broad-scale visioning efforts going on now. One might look at the web sites for the SF Bay Joint Venture (Home – San Francisco Bay Joint Venture), the San Francisco Estuary Partnership (Home – San Francisco Estuary Partnership), BCDC’s BayAdapt program (Home New – Bay Adapt), and the Coastal Conservancy’s Bay Program (San Francisco Bay Area – California State Coastal Conservancy ) pages to learn more. We partner with all of these groups and participate in those visioning efforts and the projects that come out of them.

Advocacy & Lessons Learned

Can you talk about the conversations with elected officials and how the narrative has developed over the long term?

• A lot of our work depends on coordinating with the cities and counties that own shoreline land or control the permits, easements, and approvals we need. Local elected officials are key to making that happen. They ultimately decide whether to approve recommendations their city or county staff bring forward, and they can be strong supporters of this work (or not).
  
  State and federal elected officials play a different role. They can help ensure funding by writing support letters for grants, or they can raise awareness of our work. We’re looking for ways to work more closely with elected officials at every level, so they can be more active in supporting our work and addressing public concerns. Save The Bay has an effort underway to do exactly that, and it’s already generating good ideas.

What lessons or ideas from this project could help teams working on other Bay-fronting restoration efforts?

• This is an enormous question, with hundreds of ways to answer it and probably thousands of pages that could be written on the topic. But given the urgency of sea-level rise, a few things stand out: start early, move fast, and don’t try to be perfect. The world is changing quickly. If you spend too long chasing the exact right answer, by the time you find it, the situation will have shifted and it’ll be wrong. It’s better to get to an 80% solution early and adjust the last 20% as you go. That’s one lesson. There are dozens of others.