Levee Breach Marks Key Step in Wetlands Restoration Project

Bay City News Service—California Department of Fish and Game officials are hosting a ceremony today at a spot overlooking Hayward's Mt. Eden Creek to highlight a planned levee breach intended to restore tidal wetlands there.

The controlled breach, set for early this afternoon, marks a major step in the organization's South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, a more than decade-long effort to restore the Bay Area's wetlands.

The event is the first in a series of eight levee breaches planned in the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve over the coming weeks, officials said.

Breaching the levees will open up about 630 acres of the ecological reserve's former salt evaporation ponds along the shores of Hayward and Union City, laying the groundwork for the return of animals such as fish, crabs and harbor seals and the eventual re-growth of pickleweed, marsh gumplant and other native plants, Fish and Game officials said.

The levees were built by salt-making companies and as part of flood control projects over the past two centuries.

"This marsh restoration project doubles the area of the reserve now open to the tides," Department of Fish and Game biologist John Krause said in a statement. "It's a very different landscape from what it was five years ago."

Over the past decade, the project has restored some 3,000 acres of the South Bay's salt ponds using state, federal and private funding, including American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants, according to Fish and Game officials.

In addition to restoring crucial wetlands, the Eden Landing project has also created 40 jobs, officials said.