Since May 2026, the east side of Aquatic Park from south of Channing to Heinz has been shorn of decades-old bushes and trees as the transcontinental railroad rebuilt long-rusted tracks. Large industrial buildings again loom just beyond a steep, bare railroad grade, much as in the 1930s when the park was new. This section documents the resulting changes. As this is written, in November, the refurbished tracks are in heavy use but work on the steep grade to the park continues. A possible record El Nino of heavy storms approaching, the loose soil and rock of the steep grade could overwhelm wetlands that help purify West Berkeley’s runoff. Please check back for future updates.
Above left: typial vegetation at the railroad grade, April 2026. Note utility box (orange arrow). Right: Longer-range view looking north, Oct. 31, 2026, with new erosion-control cloth on bare slope.
Quick history: The busy transcontinental tracks, built in the 1870s, sit on the old Bayshore bluff. Because the railroad owned the shoreline, a feeder to the Bay Bridge — the Bay Area’s largest Depression-era public works project, today I-80 — had to be built on fill offshore. That trapped a finger of Bay. Berkeley had an idea: dredge the shallow water and connect the resulting lagoons to the Bay with pipes. So instead of a cesspool of raw sewage and industrial pollution, Aquatic Park, built hastily on a shoestring, became the city’s first public shoreline park. (Much more on park history here.)
To handle rain and groundwater water from uphill seeping through the former shoreline bluff, park builders dug a ditch on the park side of the railroad grade, using gypsum to counteract the salty soil. You can see the ditch in the lower left corner of the 1939 photo at left, courtesy of Berkeley Historical Society and Museum. With time, and additions to gypsum to counter salts, this became a strip of wetland.
Over decades, thick vegetation watered by the wetland strip encouraged visitors to think of the land as park. But the Union Pacific Railroad’s land extends west of the tracks. Vital buried pipelines also border the tracks, including the Kinder Morgan fuel line buried at the western foot of the railroad grade.
The railroad takes back its land: The railroad began planning to rebuild a bottleneck underpass at the Port of Oakland by at least 2000. Two sets of rusted, unused tracks edging relatively undeveloped Aquatic Park, south of the Dreamland for Kids playground, were the most convenient place to reshuffle trains during the years of work in Oakland.
Emails and plans show that close attention to refurbishing those tracks began by 2020. There was no input from Berkeley; multiple notices to Berleley’s Parks and Public Works Departments were missed or ignored . The railroad’s first application for environmental approval, to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, included compensation for damage to Aquatic Park’s wetlands — by planting along the tracks in Albany north of Codornices Creek. Regional Board staff pushed successfully to narrow the project, reducing loss of land in Aquatic Park. But in 2024 the railroad submitted a new application for environmental approvals that would, in their words, “avoid all permanent aquatic resource impacts,” thus requiring no costly mitigation for any wetlands harmed. State and federal agencies approved this; a portion of the map they accepted is below. The blue lines indicating creeks and wetlands seem to have come from a railroad consultant (public records requests produced no other source). The complete plan is here. The environmental approval is here — 11 MB).
The approved plan, about a third shown above, shows the park’s wetlands as a railroad consultant mapped them. The plan does not show the wetlands connecting to the lagoon, and acknowledges only one of the small creeks that drains these wetlands to the main lagoon. (It is near Grayson and not on the plan segment above. The approved plan showed it as protected by a large retaining wall, but the railroad later dropped that idea without notice.)
Weak requirements, mistakes, missed opportunities: The plan assumes that environmental harms will be only short term. Except at the lone recognized creek, the railroad is required only to plant or seed small plants from a short list, mainly grasses and rushes — no shrubs or trees. After just five years instead of ten as for mitigation, up to half of vegetation may be invasive and another quarter of the area may be bare. There is no requirement to combat serious pest plants, such as giant cane (Arundo donax) that long provided a warren for illicit camps, toilets, and sex. Previously controlled by volunteers, it immediately began resprouting.
Regional Board staff were startled to discover from a railroad document that their own agency is officially unaware of any water quality problem in the park’s lagoons. The lagoons are not on the Regional Board’s 303d list of impaired waters because a typo conflated them with San Francisco’s Aquatic Park. Thus legally, as far as the state is concerned, Berkeley’s lagoons are pristine. This limits enforcement action aganst anyone, not just the railroad. Abundant finding show, and the city’s many studies and grant proposals point out, that the lagoons are unsafe for body contact or fishing, eutrophying, plagued by scummy algae and die-offs, frequently exceed allowable bacteria levels, are losing depth, and lack adequate circulation and water exchange with the Bay. Water Board staff say that changing this to corrrect the error is on a strict five year schedule — with Berkeley’s deadline just passed.
Perhaps because Berkeley missed notices, the approved plan left in place deep, somewhat dangerous antique pipes and tanks, some built for vanished heavy industries. The work eventually dug up several, including wooden pipes, and destroyed a broken, buried concrete culvert. Five tanks were left in place, some damaged, holding deep pools of water and connected to pipes that shoot polluted runoff into the lagoons in rainy season.
A rude awakening: City officials and park users found out about the plan in early April 2026, with all approvals in place and construction set to start. Alarmed disc golfers saw construction stakes on their course, and their major fundraiser was set for April. They contacted the city. This led to a quick City Manager’s memo and a flurry of hasty meetings . Bird lovers and park users could see that the park would lose its isolated, natural feel and that birds and other creatures would be displaced. The eucalyptus trees towering along the tracks, a hazard to trains, were also valuable habitat for herons, hawks, songbirds, and butterflies. Shark Stewards and Friends of Five Creeks were concerned about loss of wetlands and pollution from the railroad and soils inland washing or blowing to the lagoon.
Meetings led to promises of money to plant trees and accommodations for the disc-golf course. According to the Parks Department, through grants and direct payment, the railroad will give Berkeley’s Parks Department about $200,000 for around 1000 new trees and other plants, mostly natives. Planting is to begin in winter 2026-7, with volunteers helping.
Clearing began in May. Effects were brutal, although damage and disturbance in the park were limited by moving equipment and materials by rail and from the east side of the tracks through Bayer US LLC, Berkeley’s largest industry.
Below: Left, wood was piled on grade and removed mostly by rail and to the east. Most but not all damage in the park was avoided, ss tracks show. Right: Some trees were left standing into June to protect nesting crows.
Above: Where wetlands widened, from about the end of Carleton to north of Parker, those on railroad land were mowed or worse, left oozing into those in the park. Below: the loveliest and deepest ponds were left and remain.
Above: In September, rock was added and grading intensified. Trains regularly used the rehabilitated tracks.
By Oct. 31, the deadline in the environmental approval, most slopes were covered by jute erosion-control matting. 1North from near the west end of Carleton (near the park’s historic pier), wetlands and pools were re-forming in areas cleared and trashed.
Below left, jute and wetland pool near Dwight. Below right, wetlands on and off the railroad grade, north of Parker.
Below left: The steepest slopes, from Grayson south, remained uncovered, with traces of small dirt and gravel slides Center: The creek north of Grayson, where plans called for a protective wall, turned out to flow from a large buried and broken concrete culvert. The culvert was broken up and the creek and its origin pools covered by black fabric in July and August. This was replaced by jute and plastic silt fences (below right). The fuure of this pretty little creek, the only one officially recognized in the plans, seems uncertain.
