Salt ponds in Redwood City where the new Saltworks development is proposed. Photo: Lauren Sommer.

What do Bay Area airports and some big Silicon Valley companies have in common? They sit right on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where sea level rise is expected to have a big impact by the end of the century.

That may seem far in the future, but state agencies are preparing for climate change now by writing new rules for construction along the bay's shoreline. As you can imagine, developers and environmentalists aren't exactly seeing eye to eye.

That's evident on a patch of land at the edge of the bay in Redwood City. For more than a century, it's been home to one thing: salt.

"As you look out, you can see it looks sort of like a frozen pond," says David Smith, a Senior Vice President with DMB Associates. He's standing next to flat, industrial ponds filled with crystallizing salt. "On a typical season, you would hope to establish a layer of 8 to 12 inches."

Cargill Salt owns these ponds as part of their salt-harvesting operations. Smith is with a developer that's working with Cargill on a different vision for these more than 1400 acres.

"Welcome to the Redwood City Saltworks site," he says. Saltworks is DMB's proposal for 8,000 to 12,000 new housing units. "Half of the site would be dedicated to open spaces uses including tidal marsh restoration and then the other half would be this integrated, transit-oriented development."

Smith says it's housing that's sorely needed in the Bay Area. "You have had the explosion of economic success of Silicon Valley. We should be ashamed of our inability or unwillingness to provide housing to support those workers and that economic activity."

David Lewis, Executive Director of Save the Bay, is on the other side of the issue. "This site is not a site for housing," he says.

"Salt ponds in Redwood City are actually one of the last unprotected areas that could be restored to tidal marsh for San Francisco Bay."

It seems like a pretty typical story: a developer wants prime land to build on and environmental groups want to see wildlife habitat restored. But there's a twist, as David Smith points to on one particular map.

Bay Waters Rising

"What we're looking at is a blue inundation zone and it depicts the projections for sea level rise for the region around Redwood City," Smith says, pointing to map showing the low-lying parts of the bay's shoreline at risk from sea level rise – which includes the land we're standing on.

Smith says their plan calls for a three mile levee to protect the development from the bay. Projections from state scientists show sea level could rise by nearly six feet by the end of the century.

"We'd like to ignore it. But if we ignore it, we're ignoring it at our own economic peril," says Will Travis, Executive Director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. BCDC is the state agency with jurisdiction over the bay.

"We're building things now that will be around for a hundred years. And we should, we believe, think about how those cities, how those communities will remain viable and sustainable," he says.

BCDC is writing new regulations for development along the shore, which they'll use in future permitting decisions. They've been guided by a state plan from the Schwarzenegger administration called the California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It discourages building in low-lying areas and encourages wetland restoration.

"Wetlands are wonderful for dealing with climate change. Wetlands soak up flood water. So the wider the wetland in the front, the lower the levee can be in the back," says Travis.

Battle Over Shoreline Rules

But when BCDC released the first draft of its new development policy two years ago, the agency faced a wave of protest, especially from folks who see bay front property as prime real estate.

"It tried to do too much too fast," says Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a group representing business interests.

"We should be absolutely concerned about sea level rise, but we shouldn't allow the concern about it to say let's just stop doing everything," he says.

A number of bay-front cities had the same complaint. Public meetings got ugly. "People said things that they probably weren't proud of when the meeting was over and I know we've had epithets hurled at us," says Wunderman.

So BCDC backed off a little, saying that new development would be considered on a case by case basis. David Lewis of Save the Bay says those changes concern him, because the policy is leading the way for others.

"Most small cities don't have the resources to change the way they plan and permit developments with a big change like sea level rise. I think BCDC's at the forefront and it should be brave about doing the right thing," says Lewis.

Will Travis of BCDC says the changes were necessary, so the plan works for the dozens of cities it involves. "We want to achieve environmental protection. We have to, but not at the expense of regional prosperity. So we're trying to achieve that balance."

The challenge, Travis says, is making a global issue like climate change part of regional planning.

"A society likes dealing with climate change at the abstract. It's when you actually get down to doing something about it that people have concerns."

In October, BCDC expects to finalize the sea level rise policy that will govern development along San Francisco Bay for years to come.

Additional Links

• More about BCDC's Sea Level Rise Plan
• San Francisco Bay Sea Level Rise Map

A California gull tagged by USGS scientists. Credit: Josh Ackerman/USGS

One of the most ambitious wetland restoration projects in the country is underway in San Francisco Bay. For more than a century, the South Bay shoreline has been home to industrial salt ponds. Now, thousands of acres of those ponds are being restored for shorebirds and wildlife. But that is creating an opportunity for a very problematic bird.

The Bay Area's gulls are well-known to San Francisco Giants fans. At one recent game, as the Giants staged a late comeback during the ninth inning hundreds of gulls appeared out of the night sky. Like clockwork, they show up just before the game ends.

"Don't ask me how. They just know," says Mike Krukow, a broadcaster with the Giants. "They come in and it's always with two outs to go in the ninth inning and there they are."

The attraction, of course, is the food. "It's pizza. They've got garlic fries. They really love the garlic fries by the way," he says.

How gulls time their arrival so well is a little bit of a mystery. But their numbers have grown so high that the ballpark is considering bringing in a falcon to scare them away. But that's not possible everywhere…

South Bay Shorebirds on the Menu

At the southern end of the bay near Alviso, a crew from the US Geological Survey is working on a small island in the middle of a former salt pond. It's home to a colony of Forster's terns.

"Hey, what was the band number on that chick?" asks Garth Herring, one of the scientists on the project. The team measures and bands the small, speckled tern chicks. A few of them get radio transmitters.

"When that transmitter is attached to a live chick, the transmitter beeps at a very specific rate," says Herring.

If the chick dies, the beep slows down. But you might wonder – why do they need to know if a chick is dead?

"Just to the north of us roughly about a mile, there's one of the largest California gull colonies. They'll come in, grab the chick. And they get back to the gull colony and they regurgitate to their chicks," he says.

At which point the tern chick – and transmitter – is inside the gull – until it passes through, that is. That's when Herring and his team go looking for it.

"It's pretty common that we find just a small pile of bones, the radio transmitter and the band that was associated with that Forster's tern chick," says Herring.

Herring says they've found that gulls only prey on the terns at certain times of day. "It's timed pretty well with when the local landfill sites are closing down. They're flying back to the colonies and are picking up chicks probably around 6 o'clock on average."

Last year, 40 percent of the tern chicks they tagged were eaten by gulls. "It certainly does suggest that California gulls do have the potential to have a big impact on these breeding water birds here," he says.

Gulls Gone Wild

"They're the big bully," says Cheryl Strong , a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "They're very opportunistic and they do really well with humans."

California gulls didn't always call San Francisco Bay home. In the 1980s, a small group began nesting on one of the salt ponds. Now, that population has exploded.

"California gulls are one of the earliest nesting species and they're also probably the most aggressive. So they show up first that they can easily take over an area," says Strong.

The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project has spent millions restoring pond habitat for Forster's terns, American avocets and the threatened western snowy plover.

But it's a conservation Catch-22. As more habitat is restored for shorebirds, it also creates more habitat for gulls. And as former salt ponds are flooded during the restoration, the gulls are looking for new places to nest.

"With 40,000 gulls, there's not a lot of room for other birds," says Strong.

Strong says the Fish and Wildlife Service is writing a plan to manage the gulls. One option is killing the birds. But gulls can live up to 25 years and with an endless food source at landfills nearby, she says there's only so much they could do.

"If you're talking about removing birds lethally, it's just not feasible. They are a part of our landscape, like it or not," she says.

For now, they're trying something else.

Gull Hazing Underway

"So up ahead there are some gulls doing some courtship behaviors on the levee which is definitely a bad sign," says Caitlin Robinson-Nilsen of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. She's looking at a large flock of gulls on a salt pond near Fremont.

"This is one of the areas where we definitely don't want them to nest. One of the salt ponds we're standing right next to is a historic nesting site of the western snowy plover."

So, Robinson-Nilsen's job is to haze the gulls. She uses a whistle and walks down the levee. The gulls aren't happy about it.

"They'll dive bomb you and hit you in your head. They're very good at pooping you. They have pretty good aim that way."

Robinson-Nislen says they're hazing gulls twice a day to keep them from nesting next to sensitive shorebirds. So far, it looks like it's working. But with millions of tax dollars being spent on restoring more habitat, biologists expect they'll be doing a lot more gull management in the years ahead.

Additional Links

• South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project
• Help Track the California Gull

 The Changing Bay Educator Guide

Peer into San Francisco Bay and you probably won't see much, thanks to the murky water the bay is known for. But over the past decade, scientists have made a surprising discovery — the bay's water is clearing. As Lauren Sommer reports, clearer water is not always good news.

San Francisco Bay is home to hundreds of invasive species. Many arrived in the ballast water of large ships.

Hundreds of invasive species have been found in San Francisco Bay, according to biologists. That makes the bay one of the most invaded estuaries in the world.

Hoping to restore native fish and wildlife, California has passed the strictest rules in the country to prevent ocean freighters from introducing more foreign species to the bay. But the standards are so tough, officials may not be able to enforce them.

"Let's see we've got one, two, three exotic organisms, four exotic organisms…"

On a muddy beach in Alameda, Biologist Andrew Cohen of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions scoops up a clump of seaweed that’s home to clams, snails, and strange globs.

"Those yellow dots are the eggs, the egg mass of a Japanese sea slug which show up here a few years ago." Almost all of the animals in Cohen's hands are invasive species – originally from places like China, Australia, and the Atlantic.

Listen to the QUEST radio story Combating Bay Invaders

"Anytime I go out in the bay, there's a reasonable chance I'm gonna find something I've never seen in the bay before – something no one has seen on the Pacific coast before. That's just astonishing," says Cohen.

Most of these marine invaders arrived as international hitchhikers. Ships that carry cargo on the open ocean have to be balanced, so they don't tip over. To do that, they fill massive onboard ballast tanks by pumping water in at one port and pumping it out at the next.

"For a long time, people didn't think too much about this, cause it was just water. But eventually, we found that we were moving virtually everything that lived in the sea," Cohen says.

Marine organisms like crabs and snails have tiny free-floating larvae. So, a tank full of ballast water is like a soup of marine life. "They're so effective at dispersing because a single individual might produce a million young."

Some invaders have brought parasites that cause swimmer's itch at local beaches. Other foreign species, like the Asian clam, have altered the entire food web in San Francisco Bay. Millions of dollars have been spent trying to eradicate the worst invasive species. But Cohen says those efforts rarely work. So, the strategy has turned to prevention.

Testing New Treatment Technology

Inside the Golden Bear, a 500-foot ship at the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Engineer Bill Davidson switches on the ballast pumps. "The ballast tanks we use are right above us, which are our treatment and control tanks," says Davidson.

Davidson is testing new ballast water treatment technology. The idea is pretty simple – kill the organisms in the water, so they don't spread when the ballast is released. The system has two steps. First the ballast water is filtered. Then, chlorine is added. "And you take this chlorine and you feed it back into the ballast stream and so that will ideally oxidize or kill any live organisms," says Davidson.

The chlorine is neutralized before it’s released by the ship. But getting this system to work is trickier than it seems, because the organisms are very, very small.

In a lab on the ship, Julie Kuo of Moss Landing Marine Labs looks through a microscope at a tiny, cone-shaped plankton. "So right in your center field of view… That's a tintinnid and those guys pretty much get to as large as that."

"As large as that" is about half the width of a human hair. As part of the tests, Kuo counts the organisms in water samples from the treatment process – and, most importantly, sees if they're dead. "If they’re kind of sitting there and you don’t know if they’re alive or dead, you poke them with a probe," says Kuo.

The Frontlines of Regulation

This treatment system is designed to meet international standards that limit the number of living organisms in ballast water. Right now those standards are voluntary.

But California has adopted a goal that’s a thousand times tougher. It applies to all newly-constructed ships starting next January. The only problem is – the technology to meet California’s higher standard isn’t quite ready for prime time.

"We aren’t going to be able to go out there right now and say well, 100% you met the standard no matter what," says Nicole Dobroski with the California State Lands Commission, the agency overseeing the regulation.

She says none of the treatment systems being developed consistently meet California’s standards yet. Still, the state is moving ahead with the regulation.

"We recognize that that’s a challenge, but there's a good reason we wanted it to be a challenge. We wanted them to be innovative. We wanted them to think out of the box."

But ship operators may not have much to worry about if past enforcement policies are any indication. Ships are currently required to exchange their ballast water at least 230 miles from shore if they plan on discharging it in port. But even though hundreds of ships a year are not complying with these requirements, the State Lands Commission has only fined two ships in the past ten years.

"Our goal isn't just to come in and slap a fine on these vessels because we find that isn't necessarily the best approach. We try to work with them as much as possible, make sure they’re educated about all the necessary regulations," says Dobroski.

California's progress is likely to have a big impact on federal efforts as both the US Coast Guard and the EPA develop new national ballast water standards.

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Generally speaking, these habitats are the marshes, sand beaches, mudflats and the shallow waters of our rivers and creeks whose soil is saturated with moisture either permanently or seasonally; such areas may also be covered partially or completely by shallow pools of water.

They are also nature’s best defense against climate change and subsequent sea-level rise, because of two important functions they perform: they help reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases through their ability to sink carbon; and store and regulate water. In other words, they act as sponges absorbing any overflow of water.

The federal government came to understand how biologically productive wetlands are and in 1977 enacted the Clean Water Act, the primary federal law in the US governing water pollution and limiting wetlands destruction. The law also created requirements that if a wetland had to be drained, developers at least had to offset the loss by creating artificial wetlands.

Wetlands have historically been the victim of large-scale draining efforts for real estate development, flooding them for use as recreational lakes or agriculture. Ironically, wetlands absorb and protect the surrounding ecosystem from the polluted run-off coming from the agricultural lands that displaced them.

Since 2000, more than 300 wetland restoration projects have been commissioned, varying in size from the 0.7-acre large 12^th Street Reconstruction Project in Alameda County to more than 13,000 acres being restored as a part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project in San Mateo County. However, the collective size of the projects (58,889.5 acres across California) is dwarfed when you consider that the state has lost 95 percent of its wetland habitat in the past 125 years.

Worldwide, it is estimated that by 1993 half of the Earth’s wetlands had been drained, according to a report published in the New Scientist.

Below you’ll find a map detailing the restoration projects taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area that shows information of their size, location and construction status.

View Wetland Restoration Projects–Northern California in a larger map

Listen to The Changing Bay radio report online.

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This is one of those environmental stories where one event, seemingly far in the past, can have a surprising ripple effect into the future. Most of us think of the Gold Rush and picture prospectors panning for gold in streams and rivers. But some miners used more industrial techniques like hydraulic mining. Using massive, pressurized hoses, they washed down entire mountainsides to get to the gold. (Check out this clip from the KQED special "Saving the Bay" for more).

As a result, millions of tons of sediment washed into rivers and streams in the Sierra foothills and made its way down to San Francisco Bay.  Amazingly, that process has taken decades, creating a murkier bay in the meantime.  Ten years ago, scientists at the US Geological Survey noticed the bay was clearing. While that can have many causes, scientists believe that the sediment pulse from the Gold Rush had finally worked its way out of the system.

It seems like the story would end there, but sediment has a complex role in the bay. Some ecosystems, especially wetlands, depend on sediment.  Salt marshes are built on every high tide by sediment that gets trapped in the plants.  These wetlands are also continually sinking as the soil settles, so this growth is key for keeping them at the right elevation. Less sediment in the bay means there's less for the wetlands, which could be an issue. But there's one thing that makes it worse: sea level rise. Some estimates say that the bay could rise by 55 inches by the end of the century.  That means sediment will have an increasingly important role in the future, one that state agencies are just starting to plan for.

Listen to The Changing Bay radio report online.

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