Project Update: Bair Island
March 2016
After a rainy start to the day on the morning of December 10, 2015, the sun came out just in time for the momentous breach of the last levee on Inner Bair Island. Moments later, the salty waters of San Francisco Bay came gurgling into its sloughs, bringing to fruition this 33-year old effort to protect and restore approx 1000 acres to tidal wetlands.
Before the perimeter levee could be breached the subsided land required almost 1.5 million cubic yards of clean soil to raise the elevation to marsh plain. Led by Ducks Unlimited and thanks to creative partnering with the Army Corps of Engineers and The Port of Redwood City, almost all of the sediment came from the City’s shipping channel. This kind of beneficial re-use of dredge material not only helps make this scale of restoration possible while maintaining the Port, but it also keeps dredged materials out of the Bay and/or ocean.
This project presents a model of success for other cooperativeefforts around the Bay Area showing how federal, state and local agencies, can work together with non-profit organizationsand the private sector, to realize anambitious vision of conservation.
Click on images to enlarge
Photos by Beth Huning
Find more information on the levee breach here.
For more information on this project visit our Bair Island project archive page.
