Breaching Levees: It Depends on the Context

Opening the salt pond to the Bay (SJ Mercury)

We're used to hearing about heavy rain, flooding, levee breaches, then more flooding. However, not all levee breaches are bad.

To the cheers of distant onlookers, a yellow excavator sliced through a dirt levee to open a long-captive 19th century industrial salt pond to the wild San Francisco Bay on Wednesday morning, allowing tidal waters to surge into a 300-acre future marsh in Menlo Park...

Flanking the northwest side of the Dumbarton Bridge, the now-barren pond will gain a more natural and lovely palette. Once filled with water and fresh sediments, it will support seeds that float in from adjacent marshes, then plants will germinate. This will welcome the arrival of little crustaceans, like crabs, as well as invertebrates, birds and fish...

Several major projects had to be completed before the Menlo Park pond could be safely opened.

Project managers first had to create several interior berms and levees so the pond wouldn’t increase the flood risk to nearby neighbhorhoods. That meant finding several hundred thousand yards of clean and uncontaminated dirt...

Gazing through binoculars, Wednesday’s crowd thrilled to the sight of the water’s steady flow.

Foster City has built a $90 million levee to keep Bay waters out.

Menlo Park is tearing down levees to let the water in.

Breaching levees: it depends on the context.