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Redwood City Baylands at Risk
 
by Lennie Roberts

A new development/landowner team is now gauging public sentiment regarding the 1433 acre Cargill property, which stretches from Redwood City’s Seaport Boulevard to Bayfront Park in Menlo Park. Through multiple mailings to Redwood City households, telephone surveys, public forums, and tours of the site, the “Redwood City Industrial Saltworks” consortium is testing the waters for a plan that will be unveiled sometime next year.

What is not being asked through the outreach process, however, is whether the public would support the environmentally superior choice — the restoration of this area.

The Redwood City Baylands were diked off from the rest of the bay in the 1940’s for salt production. An aerial view shows the original network of slough drainage patterns and areas where salt crystallizer beds were located. All of the Redwood City Baylands could be restored to tidal action and, depending upon their depth, would become marshlands, shallow tidal areas, or upland habitat.

Benefits of restoration
Other parts of the bay now being restored are seeing tremendous benefits from restoration, including: reduction of flooding hazards, improvement to Bay water and air quality, reduction in need for dredging of navigable channels, increased habitat for hundreds of species, avoidance of huge costs to build and maintain levees, and moderation of temperature extremes.

Costs of development
Development for commercial, residential and/or industrial uses would require building higher levees and filling in the old salt production ponds. The City’s new initiatives for revitalization of the Downtown and El Camino areas could suffer if limited public funds are re-directed to the Cargill property and other baylands still being eyed for development, such as Pete’s Harbor and the Peninsula Marina. Highway capacity in this area is at its limit. New development would cause gridlock conditions on 101 and Seaport Boulevard. Other public needs such as schools would be impacted. Increased risk of flooding as the Bay and ocean water levels rise will have dramatic economic consequences.

The public needs to fully understand the costs and benefits of the Redwood City Industrial Saltworks plan. While it is encouraging that the development consortium is consulting with the public early in the process, its information gathering is by nature selective, and conclusions could well be self-serving. In the meantime, CGF and other environmental organizations will continue to educate the public about the natural value of the Bay.

A vision for Redwood City’s shoreline
San Francisco Bay is one of California’s most treasured natural resources, and is one of the world’s most recognized visual icons. The Bay and the watersheds that surround it are home to hundreds of species of fish and wildlife, as well as over 7 million human residents. Since the gold rush days, the Bay has lost over 85% of its historic wetlands and marshlands.

In 1991, Congress included Redwood City’s baylands within the boundaries of the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, but they were not purchased with the other 16,000 acres of Cargill lands, due to exorbitant appraisals that assumed development. Since nearly all of the 1400 acres would have to be rezoned for development, and obtain approvals from myriad agencies, the assumptions of the appraisals have subsequently been deemed invalid. Is it too much to hope that these last remaining great open spaces along Redwood City’s shoreline can be restored, with public access trails, compatible recreation such as sports fields, and wildlife habitat?

Published Summer 2007 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated August 20, 2007.