SFBRA Authorizes $796,100 for Phase Two of the Heron’s Head Park Shoreline Resilience Project
Today, the Governing Board of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority authorized a grant of $796,100 to the Port of San Francisco for Phase Two of the Heron’s Head Park Shoreline Resilience Project.
Heron’s Head Park contains a mosaic of shoreline habitats including tidal marsh, mudflats, tidal ponds, rocky intertidal habitat, and various subtidal habitats that support a diversity of San Francisco Bay wildlife. In addition, the park contains an environmental education center (EcoCenter) and a spur of Bay Trail, providing the adjacent communities a unique space for outdoor recreation along a highly industrialized shoreline.
The overall project will provide beneficial native habitat enhancement improvements to an urban shoreline park in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, a diverse and economically disadvantaged community in southeast San Francisco. In addition to the habitat enhancement benefits, the project includes community engagement, local job training in green infrastructure activities, and workforce development.
The project phase funded today consists of ten years of postconstruction monitoring and reporting on project performance. Monitoring and reporting on the performance of the project is particularly important given its innovative nature-based design, which was developed in collaboration with staff of the Authority and the Bay Restoration Regulatory Integration Team (BRRIT). The design deviates from traditional shoreline armoring structures that disrupt natural processes. Instead, it implements nature-based solutions, which use natural and/or constructed materials to mimic natural features that stabilize and restore the ecological functions of the shoreline. The project will place coarse sediment to create beaches at the bayward edge of the marshes, and use additional structures, such as rock groynes, large woody debris, and subtidal oyster reef balls, to protect and enhance shoreline habitat. This concept is being tested in several locations around San Francisco Bay. This project will provide information that will be useful to the Regionally Advancing Living Shorelines Project, a collaborative effort funded by the Authority in June 2022, in which the Port is one of the key landowners.
This grant is the second funding authorization for the Heron’s Head Park Shoreline Resilience Project. In July 2020, the Governing Board authorized $297,000 to the Port of San Francisco to implement native plant propagation, revegetation, invasive weed control, and community engagement and job training working with Literacy for Environmental Justice.
Learn more about the project here.
