By KERI BRENNER | kbrenner@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal
…
By KERI BRENNER | kbrenner@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal
Environmental groups and city leaders are questioning Sausalito Marin City School District’s effort to relocate an underground creek as part of a plan to build a new elementary school.
The Sierra Club Marin Group, along with Friends of Willow Creek, the Marin Conservation League and the Sausalito City Council, are calling for a redesign of the district’s plan to unearth the now-subterranean Willow Creek, a process known as “daylighting.”
The district …
Friends of Willow Creek worked with Sausalito Beautiful and the City Public Works to replace the fence creek crossing along Bridgeway with a new decorative fence and beautiful sign denoting Willow Creek. The new sign plays a critical role in raising public awareness of this natural resource in the City. This is a landmark accomplishment of our group, a permanent reminder to our community of the living creek we still have to protect and restore. And a positive remembrance of …
Friends of Willow Creek worked with Sausalito-Marin City School District this Summer to restart the Well and Water Tank (connected to the Willow Creek basin). The tank and pumping system will enable irrigation of the playfields and mitigate the challenges of maintaining the fields during the ever more frequent periods of drought. City and School District managers are proving to be important allies and partners in creek restoration, sharing their knowledge and experience in other communities integrating water resources with …
This year Friends of Willow Creek celebrated our 10-year anniversary as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental education and creek resources of Sausalito.
For those of you that toiled for hours pulling out weeds and planting native plants at the creek and on the campus, we have good news to share. Through partnerships with the City and the School District, we are gaining support and making progress in having Willow Creek restored above ground on the campus at 636 …
FoWC donated time and money in 2020 to the “Yes on Measure P” campaign to issue bonds for Sausalito and Marin City school campus renovations, including creek restoration. Leading up to the vote, FoWC board members joined Measure P organizers and community members placing calls to residents and urging a “Yes” vote. Measure P passed with the highest percentage of “Yes” votes of any school bond measure in California in 2020 at 73% of the vote. These bonds funds are …
This winter the Friends worked extra hard to apply for large private and public grants to make creek restoration on the Willow Creek Academy (WCA) campus a reality. Board member Emily Schmidt was a sponsor for our application to the Lennox Foundation to design a daylighted creek in the upper campus, and remove the non-native eucalyptus trees to accommodate the restoration. Also included is design of an outdoor classroom to accompany what would be a new, ¼-acre size outdoor laboratory …
March 31st, 2017 Marks the Sixth Anniversary of Friends of the Creek
Today marks our 6th anniversary as a 501c3 nonprofit, as we were established on March 31, 2011, in anticipation of Earth Day that year when we cleared the Nevada and Bridgeway Willow Grove site for the first time. Since then, we’ve not looked back, taking advantage of the great opportunity we have to create stewardship of this Creek by the Willow Creek Academy public school and the …
Friends Board member Anne Siskin has been working with head of School Tara Seekins and Maintenance Chief Alan Rothkop, as well as some WCA 3rd graders and mentor students from Marin Country Day, to design a drainage system to go with our new 2000 square foot 
hillside native plant garden. On MLK Day this year, over 80 volunteers from local business Heath Ceramics helped the Friends clear weeds from this hillside in the center of campus and plant dozens …
Happy new year! The Friends Of The Creek are keeping busy advancing the prospect of daylighting the creek through Sausalito, but also building partnerships around stewardship in the watershed, and supporting the teachers of the local public school in environmental, experiential education. Recent success in the City to protect the Lincoln-Butte open space next to Willow Creek’s neighboring creek to the north, spearheaded by the local group Open Space Sausalito, bodes well for our goals of restoring creeks, beyond just …