The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) Board of Directors and staff recently celebrated the grand opening in the Oakland hills of the Alder Creek and Leatherwood Creek Restoration Project at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, the largest creek restoration project in the park district’s 90-year history. This project restores 3,000 linear feet (about a half-mile) of previously culverted creek to more natural conditions and is now open to the public. Related Articles The Alder Creek and Leatherwood Creek Restoration Project, formerly known as the McCosker Project in honor of the last family who owned and worked on the property, provides natural habitat for special-status or protected species, including the California red-legged frog and others.
“This is an area of Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve that has undergone great transformation,” said Elizabeth Echols, the park district’s board president. “The project is the largest creek daylighting project in the entire Bay Area, with new access to the beautiful and important Alder and Leatherwood creeks in the upper San Leandro Creek watershed.” The 250-acre site is situated within a deep canyon of dense oak woodland at the bottom of a ridgeline of rolling grassland hills.
When the park district acquired the property in 2010, the creeks within the property had been buried underground in culverts to make room for the rock quarrying operations that historically took place there. The culverts were deteriorating, creatin.