Sewage Water May Save Marsh Areas

For biology professor Edward Lyke, San Francisco Bay’s marshes and mud flats are reminders that looks can be deceiving.

“To the casual eye, the mud flats and marshes might look barren and uninhabited, yet they are among the richest, most productive wildlife ecosystems,” said Lyke, who has taught biology at California State University, Hayward, for two decades.

“There is beauty and value in all of the bay’s systems, even the mud flats,” Lyke said. “But we have to look for more than just visual value. We need to look past the rubble, beyond the mud.”

Lyke, 48, is a consultant and researcher on a 400-acre marsh restoration project on the Hayward shoreline north of the San Mateo Bridge Toll Plaza.

Sewage System Water

Coordinated by the Hayward Area Shoreline Planning Agency and the East Bay Regional Bay Park District, the project will use water from the Alvarado-Niles sewage system to restore the area to marsh conditions.

Lyke and the agencies involved will monitor the effects of the effluent in the water on shoreline plant and animal communities. Lyke will concentrate on how invertebrates use the shoreline area, focusing on microscopic mud-organisms known as meio-fauna.

“Though we know little about the meio-fauna, we do know that they are vital to the area’s food chain, and by studying them we will be able to better understand the shoreline ecosystem of the bay,” said Lyke.

Lyke will conduct before-and-after experiments on the distribution and abundance of the invertebrates, which live between sand particles.

Control Area

“The beauty of this project is that it allows for a control and an experimental area, we’ll be able to ascertain the effects of pollutants from the sewage water,” he said.

There’s a delay in the project because the water that will eventually enter the bay near Johnson’s Landing “is not quite clean enough yet to be used for the marsh restoration project,” Lyke said.

“It will be interesting to see how these animals will adapt and if they will recolonize the area.”

The project will return tidal action to 240 acres, and 150 acres will become brackish, a mixture of fresh and salt water.

Lyke said the remaining 22,000 acres of wetlands, which trap pollutants and are a factor in the bay’s mild climate, support myriad creatures including hawks, mice, owls--even an occasional shark or string-ray.