Tend the new trees Sat., May 31
Volunteers helped plant more than 1000 new trees and large shrubs on the west side of Aquatic Park in the last year! Help them thrive, support songbirds, lessen freeway noise, and transform this underused side of the park by joining in weeding and mulching on 9:15 AM – 1 PM Sat., May 31. Lunch included! All ages welcome! Meet at the Kenneth A. Hayes Boathouse at the southwest end of the main lagoon. Info here. You can walk or bicycle from either end, but with a car, use the south entrance. Map here. You can cycle or walk from the main, north entrance, but by car you need to go into Emeryville and double back to the parking circle where Bolivar (also called Shellmound and Bay Street) is blocked. Map here. Signup and details here.
Shark Stewards shoreline cleanups, monitoring getting good results
Since January, Shark Stewards, working with UC Berkeley students from the Ocean Society and Cal Surfrider, have removed thousands of pieces of litter in cleanups focused on the park’s south end — another cleanup is planned Sunday, May 11, with details to come. Students also are monitoring water quality, using a handheld device from piers. No serious problems found so far this spring! Find out more at Shark Stewards table at the Berkeley Bay Festival, Sat., Apr. 26, at Shorebird Park in the Marina.
Big grant for cleaning, strengthening tide tubes
Berkeley has been promised a $4.1 million grant to clean and strengthen the pipes that connect Aquatic Park’s main and middle lagoons with each other and the Bay, improving circulation and lessening the chance that the connections would collapse and block Interstate 80. This was the final grant from a CalTrans program financed mainly by Biden adminnistration programs meant to deal with climate change, and ended a year early as administrations changed.
Construction remains years away. Complex permitting from CalTrans and the East Bay Regional Park District will be required. dditional federal funds may be needed for construction under I-80.
The connections have been almost unchanged since the park was created in the Great Depression, except that later landfill west of I-80 blocked circulation from the north end. During the Great Depression, building the first version of what is now I-80, so that cars could reach the then-new Bay Bridge, had cut off a long, shallow finger of Bay, turning it into a cesspool. The pipes were installed and park created to solve this problem. Periodic algae blooms and fish die-offs have plagued the park since its early years, however. Silt from city runoff, steadily making the middle lagoon shallower, limits flow through several pipes. (Find Background, maps, and photos on the circulation challenges here. More than 40 years of studies are here.)
A tough invader gone — for now!
From a Berkeley Project work day in November 2024 (left) to a February 2025 finish (below), UC Berkeley volunteers, weed warriors and, in a final push, volunteers from Congregation Beth Israel dug out a huge clump of invasive giant cane (Arundo donax) near the south end of the main lagoon. We expect some roots were missed. Big thanks to our wonderful interns, and to the Berkeley Parks Department for picking up green waste and promising to cut the fast-growing canes.
Good news for Aquatic Park water monitoring!
In more progress, AVA, Alameda County’s green energy provider, is honoring Friends of Five Creeks us with $2500 Community Sponsorship to purchase automated water-quality monitoring equipment for Berkeley’s Aquatic Park.
We expect to partner with Shark Stewards, with most work done by interns training for future environmental careers! With the most up-to-date equipment, we will be able to continuously measure temperature, dissolved oxygen, and salinity, contributing to building baseline data for climate change and to help with management of this beautiful and heavily used 100-acre park. Aquatic Park’s lagoons, like many such human-made water bodies, have been troubled almost since their creation with recurrent algae blooms and wildlife die-offs; they must also be managed to avoid flooding. Climate change is likely to add to these challenges.
Tour Dreamland Playground area with biologist 10AM – 11AM Thursday, Jan. 30, emphasizing existing natural resources and native plant/pollinator habitat enhancement possibilities at and near a replacement playground. A “pop-up workshop” also will give opportunities to comment on two alternative conceptual designs. No signup needed — meet at Aquatic Park at Channing Way or nearby Dreamland entrance — notice does not say, but they’ll be easy to spot! Info here.
A survey asking your ideas on second-round concepts for the area closes Jan 31. , Link is here. At a Dec. 12 second online meeting on redesigning the Dreamland for Kids playground, consultants introduced two fairly detailed conceptual designs: “Dreamland Reimagined,” focused on fantasy-themed play structures (below left), and “Land and Sea Playground” with more spread out, naturalistic play (below right). (Download larger graphics here; additional background and graphics here , as well as lower on this page (scroll down).
Waterside Workshops/City of Berkeley annual waterside festival Dec. 7 saw 100 kids get free bikes (plus helmets) from Street Level Cycles’ annual giveaway (right). Also food, activities, and fun including a bike parade (below right) and drawing a favorite critter — inspired by Friends of Five Creeks’ big poster of life from sky to lagoon bottom (below left).
Nov. 25 Berkeleyside article outlines that Berkeley Commons lab building, Addison to Bancroft east of Aquatic Park, is still empty amid glut of West Berkeley lab space. Link here.
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 Berkeley Commons lab developers, who have pledged to maintain them for some years.) 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.