The Watershed Project has won a $202 grant from the Coastal Conservancy to turn a 2,280 sq. ft. paved median in Booker T. Anderson Park parking lot into a bioswale, and 4,380 square feet of the existing pavement in the parking lot will become a second, larger bioswale, protecting the restored creek as well as downstream water quality from pollutants that run off the 1.2 acre parking lot. The vegetated bioswales will add an additional 1.32 acres of green space to the site while removing asphalt that contributes to the local urban heat island effect. Stormwater will flow into the bioswales through curb cuts, detaining and infiltrating flows.

The project was identified in the Baxter Creek Maintenance and Management Plan, written in 2010. That plan recommends bioswales to eliminate parking lot runoff overflows and filter polluted runoff. This project also fulfills several of the goals in the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (2007) for the San Francisco Estuary; to name just a few: treating urban runoff at its source and enhancing stream functions to “enhance resiliency and reduce pollution in the Estuary and its watersheds.”

The City of Richmond will provided a match of in-kind services values at $95K (demolishing asphalt, etc.).