Coming: Shark Stewards talk on Bay Area sharks Dec. 4; Aquatic Park festival Dec. 7
David McGuire of Shark Stewards, a dedicated steward at Aquatic Park along with international efforts, speaks on Sharks of the California Coast noon- 1 PM Wed., Dec. 4 (re-scheduled from November). Info and registration here.
Waterside Workshops and the Berkeley Parks Department celebrate the end of construction in Aquatic Park, with a FREE fun festival led by the youth of Waterside Workshops, noon- 4 PM Satl, Dec. 7. Street Level Cycles will give free bikes to kids at our annual Kids Bike Giveaway. Waterside Workshops and BORP will decorate bikes for a bike parade. Waterside will serve tamales, gelato from Passione Emporio and hot mulled cider in its courtyard. Stay tuned for more details!
Nov. 2 Volunteer planting launches Bolivar Drive improvement: Trails, tables, more
About 60 volunteers, including UC Berkeley students from the Berkeley Project, planted close to 300 trees and other natives along Aquatic Park’s shorelines on Sat., Nov. 2.
The event officially opened improvements along Bolivar Drive including new trails overlooks, and picnic areas, plus permeable surfaces to keep pollution out of the lagoon. (The improvements were mostly paid for by the lab developers.)
Information and flyer here from a more in-depth walk Oct. 27.
At the main lagoon’s south end on Nov. 2 and 3, Friends of Five Creeks and UC students volunteering with the Berkeley Project removed a huge stand of invasive giant cane, Arundo donax, along with acacias and fennel.
Friends of Five Creeks interns’ shoreline observations also provided new information for this website on what lives in the lagoons, water circulation, and instability.
Send your ideas on replacing Dreamland for Kids playground by Nov. 8: About 30 people “attended” an Oct. 8 Zoom presentation on replacing Aquatic Park’s 24-year-old Dreamland for Kids Playground, including reconfiguring nearby paths, picnic areas, and restroom. (Scroll down for pictures and background.)
Consultants got lively feedback on three concepts. Now, the city wants your reactions to these, as well as other ideas, by Nov. 8. You can see the consultants’ presentation here (big file — be patient), scroll down to the three concepts, and then fill out a survey here. With ideas that don’t fit the survey, email here.
Big changes for the Dreamland for Kids area? With $300,000 from the city’s General Fund, the Parks Department plans to design a replacement for the Dreamland for Kids playground, north of where Channing would be if it crossed the tracks. The big wooden play structure — largest in the city — was among collaborations throughout the nation between landscape architect Robert Leathers and local volunteers. Aquatic Park’s effort was spearheaded by Berkeley Partners for Parks, who chose placement and details and, along with Parks staff, organized hundreds of volunteers of all ages to do much of the construction.
The popular playground shows its 20+ years and does not meet modern accessibility standards. Parks Director Scott Ferris says that the city is working with staff and on-call landscape architects, with public input perhaps six to eight months off. A new playground would have to mesh with other changes: A new grant to reduce runoff pollution promises a 10,000-square-foot rain garden or “bioswale” in the present parking area (scroll down for more info).
The three acres just north of the parking lot, also bordered by Bolivar Drive, Bancroft, and the railroad tracks, may be redeveloped as laboratories similar to those still under construction just to the north. Woodstock Development of Burlingame has approached the city about replacing the 50-year-old, one story buildings dating from the 1970s. This would require planning forpedestrians, cyclists, and cars on the narrow strip between the property and the lagoon; emergency access and evacuation; the planned large bioswale, and future rising groundwater and possible flooding.
Volunteers help plant new forest on west side of Aquatic Park: The little-used west shore of the main lagoon, polluted by freeway noise, has a new forest intended to lessen noise and draw people and birds. The area has about 1,200 new plants, plus an irrigation system to help with maintenance. According to Ian Kesterson, city forester, about 300 trees will get quite large if they survive; about 300-400 would be small trees or large shrubs at maturity, and others are smaller shrubs or groundcovers.
Students from nearby Black Pine Circle day school — 120 of them, from kindergarten to eighth grade 11 — volunteered around the lagoons on the school’s April 19 Pace Seeds of Change service day. Groups helped at Waterside Workshops and Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP), picked up trash with Shark Stewards and park staff, and weeded and pruned in the hummingird and butterfly garden next to Dreamland for Kids playground with Friends of Five Creeks (left, handing the big bags of weeds over the fence for pickup).
In January, contractors planted 100 trees edging the freeway (left) and installed irrigation to keep the new plants alive (center). At volunteer events Feb. 3, Mar. 9, and Apr. 6, hundreds helped with planting and mulching. Costs, more than $300,000, came from a CalTrans/state Natural Areas grant to mitigate freeway impacts, the Bayer Fund, and about a sixth from the Berkeley Parks Tax.
Tile mural planned: In October, the Civic Arts Commission chose Masako Miki’s proposed tile mural, with elements from Ohlone and Japanese folklore, for a $700,000 project to beautify what is now a plain concrete wall between the north end of the Aquatic Park main lagoon and the city’s animal shelter. All proposals for a larger art project along the main lagoon were rejected; the Commission plans to write a new description and seek new proposals.
Grant for urban-runoff treatment for Bancroft-Channing approved: The US Environmental Protection Agency has approved a $1.5 million grant to pay half the cost of $3 million in improvements to treatment of urban runoff from near the west ends of Channing and Bancroft to Aquatic Park, a small part of polluted discharges to the lagoons from the city.
The project is expected to include a 10,000 square foot “rain garden” in the present parking lot next to Dreamland for Kids playground and centrifugal trash separators at Channing and Bancroft east of the railroad. These could also be designed to reduce inflows of smaller particles. The grant proposal is here. The work would lessen pollution from two “microwatersheds” that drain small areas in West Berkeley directly to the main lagoon – a small fraction of the polluted urban runoff to Aquatic Park’s lagoons. An overall view of circulation and urban runoff in the Aquatic Park lagoons is here.