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Who We Are
In 1987, Congress officially designed the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary as an "estuary of national significance," and the Estuary Project was created. A federal-state-local partnership, the San Francisco Estuary Project is one of 28 National Estuary Programs throughout the United States that were established under Section 320 of the Clean Water Act. Since then, the San Francisco Estuary Project and its partners have worked together to protect and restore the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary's wildlife, wetlands, and other natural resources.
The Project Management Committee developed a plan of action to protect and restore the Estuary called the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the Bay and Delta (CCMP); the plan was updated in 2007. Estuary Project staff and partners work on diverse projects that implement priority actions identified in this plan. Funded in part by an ongoing grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Estuary Project also manages a number of federal, state, and local grants and contracts related to the actions in the plan.
Our History
In 1993, a thick, brown "to-do" list landed on desks and slid into mailboxes all around San Francisco Bay and the Delta. Though no trumpets sounded a fanfare, and the document's cover sported a blue heron rather than a blonde movie star, its publication was cause for quiet celebration. For the first time in the California water world—where industries, farmers, environmentalists, and government were more often at odds than evens over how to manage the region's waters, wetlands, and wildlife— 100 people agreed on 145 things to do to preserve, enhance, and restore the estuarine ecosystem.
The 236 pages of the CCMP was a first-of-its kind for Northern California. Those were the days when government didn't regularly invite stakeholders to the negotiating table, when science didn't always inform policy, when words like "watershed," and "restoration," and "adaptive management" and even "estuary" were still being looked up in the dictionary. Those were the days when we believed fish could be saved with ladders and screens and hatcheries, that wetlands could be filled but recreated elsewhere, and that pollution could be stopped at the end of the pipe.
But in the five years and hundreds of hours of meetings it took to craft the CCMP, something changed. Those 100 people—brought together by the San Francisco Estuary Project and representing state and federal agencies, ports, fishing groups, oil industries, cities, birdwatchers, developers, rice farmers, hunters, open space advocates, Bay watchdogs, boaters, voters, and the like—launched a spirit of collaboration that permeates many of our environmental and water management programs today. That spirit, and the grander watershed-wide vision of the CCMP, now continues in dozens of programs and initiatives, such as CALFED, the San Francisco Bay Water Board's priority pollutant TMDL processes, the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture, among others. In August 2007, the Estuary Project completed an 18-month, collaborative process to review and update the CCMP. For more information about the CCMP, click here. Much has been accomplished since the 1993 CCMP was released; for a list of some key accomplishments, click here.
For More Information:
San Francisco Estuary National Estuary Program fact sheet, 2007
San Francisco Estuary Project brochure