Opinion: Huge development on salt ponds would be terrible
The San Francisco Bay is a natural treasure integral to the quality of life, the natural beauty and the economy of our region. It is essential that we protect and restore it.
That is why more than 90 current and former elected officials, representing all nine Bay Area counties, are urging the Redwood City Council to reject a proposal from Cargill for a massive new development on San Francisco Bay salt ponds.
The era of filling in the bay is over. That destruction was stopped 40 years ago. Now, the bay's salt ponds provide the best opportunity to restore a portion of the 150,000 acres of valuable wetlands that have been lost.
But Minnesota-based Cargill and its development partner, Arizona-based DMB Associates, want to turn back the clock with a massive development that would move 30,000 people onto 1,400 acres of salt ponds that otherwise could be restored. No development so breathtaking in size or misguided in scope has been proposed in half a century.