Starting the Process

Restoring a salt pond to a different type of wetland habitat isn’t as simple as pushing out a levee and letting the tide flow in. Billions of gallons of water, millions of cubic yards of sediment, and even the salinity of the water must be carefully managed to ease the transition.

Cargill Salt’s watermen, the most experienced water managers on the Bay, have built and operated inflow gates and discharge structures to help restore the first of the ponds to undergo the transition to a new kind of habitat.

The company has also been managing the old salt pond complex – cobbled together over a century from hundreds of small, independent salt harvesting operations, some dating back to the Gold Rush days – to reduce the salinity of the brines they contain.

Instead of the traditional effort to concentrate the brines to eventually harvest the salt, watermen must now maintain lower salinity levels to allow restoration work to begin most efficiently and to keep the ponds from getting too salty to support key wildlife species while they wait for their turn at being restored.

“We’ve got to continue to move these brines through the system to the plant site so they don’t get saltier,” explains Barbara Ransom, environmental manager for Cargill Salt.

The Salt Pond Ecosystem
Associated Habitat
Protected Species
Restoration Project
Starting the Process
A History of Cooperation