186 



FIGURE 2. Richmond Model Cities Plan for Wildcat Creek. 



, VenJe School 



ratting bnsln ""ree Irall^ 



picnic area 



fishing 



l ^Mfff^{ 



mini-park with 

 amphitheater 



SOURCE Jo-nl Agency Committee lor the Development ot North Richmond-San Pablo Bay Aiea. 

 "North Richmond-San Paolo Bay Area Study— Summary Report ' (Contra Costa County. September 



1971) 



ciation, and the Contra Costa County 

 Shoreline Parks Committee, formed a 

 coalition to request that a plan be de- 

 veloped that recognized the value of 

 Wildcat and San Pablo creeks as im- 

 portant local and regional resources 

 and that recognized the regulatory, 

 funding, and technical design problems 

 inherent in the county's proposed plan. 

 The coalition raised several impor- 

 tant environmental concerns: 



• Wildcat Creek was classified by 

 the California Department of Fish and 

 Game as one of the last remaining 

 streams in the San Francisco Bay area 

 with almost a continuous riparian envi- 

 ronment along its length. However, the 

 county/corps Selected Plan would make 

 it a concrete and earth-lined channel 

 complete with covered box culverts. 



• Environmental experts, including 

 two nationally prominent hydrologists, 

 Luna Leopold and Phil Williams, feared 

 that the project would, through sedi- 

 mentation, do serious harm to the wet- 

 lands and marshes of the lower flood- 

 plain. Hydrologists reported to the co- 

 alition that the corp's estimates of sedi- 

 ment moving through the two creeks 

 were substantially too low; that the 

 concrete-lined channels would not pro- 

 vide the flood protection assumed by 



16 



the project's designers because the sedi- 

 ment would increase the hydraulic re- 

 sistance and decrease the capacity of 

 the channels; that the plan would create 

 costly and frequent maintenance needs; 

 and that the proposed sediment deten- 

 tion basin on Wildcat Creek would not 

 protect the marshland of the lower 

 floodplain from sedimentation. 



• There were no sponsors or plans to 

 provide recreational open space and 

 educational benefits for members of 

 the community and other regional park 

 users. 



Other issues associated with the Se- 

 lected Plan were the safety hazards of 

 locating a box culvert for high-velocity 

 storm flows next to Verde Elementary 

 School; obstacles to getting regulatory 

 approval from state and federal agen- 

 cies; and the difficulty of raising the lo- 

 cal share of the plan's cost, given the 

 Reagan administration's demand for 

 increasing local cost-sharing require- 

 ments and the plan's unattractiveness 

 to other potential federal and state 

 funding contributors. 



Despite the efforts of the Grizzly 

 Peak Flyfishers, the East Bay Regional 

 Park District, and the California De- 

 partment of Fish and Game to increase 

 public and political awareness of the 



environmental issues by planting native 

 trout in Wildcat Creek in September 

 1983, the county remained opposed to 

 broadening the project's objectives or 

 responding to technical reviews. There- 

 fore, the Urban Creeks Council and the 

 Richmond Neighborhoods Coordinat- 

 ing Council decided to design their own 

 flood-control plan and successfully ap- 

 plied to the charitable Vanguard Foun- 

 dation in San Francisco and the San 

 Francisco Foundation for funding. 

 The coalition of neighborhood and en- 

 vironmental organizations used a 1960s 

 organizing and community participa- 

 tion strategy known as advocacy plan- 

 ning, in which it solicited its own paid 

 and unpaid experts to develop a new 

 "Modified Plan" to compete with the 

 county/corps Selected Plan. 



The Modified Plan 



The East Bay Regional Park District 

 was an early supporter for developing a 

 plan that would allow for the extension 

 of popular regional trails from Wildcat 

 Canyon and Point Pinole Shoreline 

 parks along Wildcat and San Pablo 

 creeks and their marshes. Financial as- 

 sistance from the park district and the 

 Save San Francisco Bay Association 

 brought the coalition's final, alterna- 

 tive planning budget to $50,000, enough 

 to pay for the design of a flood-control 

 project on at least one of the creeks, al- 

 though the design's principles and 

 many of the details would, of course, 

 be applicable to both creeks. Eventual- 

 ly, a Modified Plan for Wildcat Creek 

 was developed with a very different de- 

 sign philosophy from that of the Select- 

 ed Plan." This new plan would modify 

 the existing creek channels to simulate 

 the natural hydraulic shape and proc- 

 esses of undisturbed streams, deposit 

 the sediment in the upstream flood- 

 plain, and restore valuable riparian 

 vegetation. The proposed concrete and 

 trapezoidal earth channels of the Se- 

 lected Plan were replaced in the Modi- 

 fied Plan with more natural, low-flow, 

 meandering channels, floodplains, set- 

 back levees, planted gabion walls, and 

 riparian trees (sec Figure 3(b) on page 

 19). The Modified Plan also included 

 December 1989 



