From the Darkness Into the Light

Friends of Willow Creek, in Sausalito, is celebrating 13 years of stewardship and advocacy for “creek daylighting”, which is the conversion of buried pipes that convey former streams to above-ground, vegetated channels.  Daylighting creeks is a complex, expensive and uncommon undertaking, as the Friends have learned, and requires patient planning, outreach, and partnership-building over a sustained period of time.  One of the reasons creeks were buried in Sausalito and mostly forgotten was to make room for buildings, streets and yards, …

Unburying the Creek Beneath It, A School Becomes a Steward

Before the shoreline was lined with shipyards during World War II, creeks flowed through Sausalito in the North Bay—rare permanent streams in a dry state full of ephemeral ones. The trees that grew up around these creeks lent the city their name: “little willow grove,” or, in Spanish, Sausalito. But the name has long been ironic, as the creeks were forced into underground culverts in the name of progress. “The …

Willow Creek Helps Drought Challenged School District

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 …

Willow Creek has Exceptional Water Quality for an Urban Creek – Aquatic Insects

During the holiday break, Professor Matthew Cover of Cal State Stanislaus joined Friends of the Creek, Chair, Steve Moore to sampled benthic macroinvertebrates (i.e., aquatic insects & other critters) from the stream bed on the Willow Grove site.  The population of insects that live in streams indicate the level of water quality.  If there is a lot of pollution or concrete channelization, the creatures that live in the stream are less pollution sensitive, like earthworms and midges.   Conversely, if the …

FUN CREEK FACTS

Did you know that throughout this historic drought in California, the lowest rainfall in recorded history (about 150 years), our neighborhood Willow Creek has continued to flow year round?
Q: How can this little creek flow year-round, when there was almost no rain between January 2013 and February 2014?  Where does this water come from?
A: The water in Willow Creek comes from condensation of the marine fog layer on the crest of the ridge above Sausalito.  The dew collects …

Earth Day 2013 at the Creek!

Thanks to all who joined us for a successful Earth Day/Global Youth Service Day event on Sat. April 27!   It was another wonderfully successful event, where we cleared more space near the creek of blackberries and ivy, and also planted over 200 of our native plants that we nurture up on Willow Creek campus in the Hoop House Nursery (thanks again to Alisa Shor and the Marin Headlands Nursery for all these riparian, meadow and upland plants!).  We hauled another …

Jiji Foundation Grant Obtained!!!!!!

Jiji Foundation Grant Obtained!!!!!!

The Friends of Willow Creek are honored and excited to announce our receiving an $8,000 grant to create a creek daylighting plan for the Willow Creek Watershed.  Daylighting is when you remove a creek from an underground pipe and re-create its open, vegetated channel above ground.  Since 2011, we have submitted numerous grant applications, including to the U.S. EPA Urban Waters Program, but we were finally successful in winning a grant from the fabulous Jiji Foundation www.jiji.org that supports community …