Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
This 350-foot section of Strawberry Creek marks one of the first re-
corded instances of creek daylighting in the United States. According to
the Oakland Museum's Christopher Richard, it was “a hugely influential
event which engendered creek consciousness in the population of the Bay
Area.”
An equally important battle was fought over Wildcat Creek 10 miles to
the north. Wildcat is one of the few completely open streams left in the
Bay Area. More than half is protected within the East Bay Regional Park
District.
During storms, Wildcat Creek used to flood North Richmond every
other year or so. Despite the regular arrival of mud and water in their
homes, community leaders for decades held fast to their dream of a green
and healthy creek lined with bait and bike shops and an environmental
magnet school. Then, in the 1980s, fluvial geomorphologist Ann Riley, as
well as engineers and community leaders, introduced a radical new con-
cept to river engineering: reducing floods by restoring streams.
Embraced by the community, the project became the Army Corps of
Engineers' first-ever attempt to build a natural flood-control project. It
brought back Wildcat Creek's naturally active channel and permitted
overflow into a floodplain. The project's stellar performance in rainy con-
ditions has caused a sea change in Corps attitude toward flood-control
design.
Wildcat Creek remains a work in progress. Its floodplains are hemmed
in by development, as well as besieged by trash dumping, industrial pollu-
tion, and urban blight. Yet community groups are employing at-risk youth
and high school students to remove invasive plants and restore creekside
greenbelts there. Meanwhile, the county flood-control district plans to buy
and demolish houses remaining in the floodplain, to give Wildcat Creek
the space to flow and flood again.
The hamlet of Martinez of Suisun Bay also suffered from chronic
flooding every two to three years. Its downtown buildings belly right up to
the banks of Alhambra Creek, with several spanning the creek itself. The
town asked wetland engineers at Philip Williams & Associates to tame
these floods. The engineers realized that the town's old railroad bridge
blocked stream currents, and they built a new bridge nearly four times
wider and slightly higher. They removed town levees and, at the creek's
outlet, excavated a tidal marsh along the shore, then directed bulldozers to
cut tidal channels. The marsh allows creek water to spread out sooner,
lowering water pressure upstream. In town, workers widened the channel
wherever possible, and planted the banks with riparian vegetation. Com-
pleted in 2003, the design has held its own during storms that have left
many other Bay Area towns underwater.
As if to demonstrate the project's ecological value, a pair of beavers
