Wildcat Creek in San Pablo is home to more shopping carts than fish, but that’s soon to change thanks to a windfall from the state.
The city of San Pablo won a $1.8 million grant last week to clean up the creek, remove culverts and add trails in hopes of someday bringing back visitors and possibly even steelhead.
Ultimately, the city hopes to extend the creekside path until it connects the Bay Trail with the Ridge Trail, providing a continuous greenway from the hills to the bay through some of the East Bay’s most impoverished neighborhoods.
“It’s uplifting that a funding stream believes in us,” said City Councilman Leonard McNeil, a San Pablo resident since 1956. “I like to think we’re the little city that could.”
Wildcat Creek is one of the East Bay’s larger watersheds, beginning in the hills east of UC Berkeley and flowing northwest into Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, through San Pablo and Richmond, and into the bay.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, Hercules won a $1.8 million grant to restore 5.2 acres of marsh; Petaluma won $850,000 to restore the Denman Reach of the Petaluma River; and Oakland got $2 million for Lake Merritt.