"The $20 million project, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of December, is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga in which the state, federal government and environmental groups are slowly converting 15,100 acres of former salt ponds that ring the South Bay, Peninsula and East Bay back to habitat for ducks, shorebirds, fish, even leopard sharks, bat rays and harbor seals."
""Marshes clean the water," said Dave Halsing, executive project manager of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, which is overseeing the Mountain View work. "They absorb wave energy to reduce flooding and sea level rise. They provide richer, more productive wildlife habitat. It's what belongs here. We are putting things back to the way they were as much as we can.""
Workers are finishing a three-year effort to restore 435 acres of former industrial salt evaporation ponds to natural wetlands and tidal marshes and to build new public bayfront hiking trails. The $20 million project is scheduled for completion by the end of December and is expected to open early next year. The work is part of a broader conversion of 15,100 acres of former salt ponds sold by Cargill in 2003 back to habitat for ducks, shorebirds, fish, leopard sharks, bat rays and harbor seals. Marshes clean water, absorb wave energy to reduce flooding and sea level rise, and provide richer, more productive wildlife habitat. The Mountain View segment, called Pond A2W, sits near Shoreline Amphitheater and about one mile north of a major tech campus and had functioned for decades as diked evaporation ponds for salt production.
Read at The Mercury News
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