Susan Schwartz, President
Friends of Five Creeks
1236 Oxford Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
Dear Ms. Schwartz,
I am writing to share some thoughts on Cerrito Creek (one of your five creeks), to which I happen to live in very close proximity. My husband tells me he met you once at his workplace and he thought you wouldn’t mind if I dropped you a line.
You may already be aware of the city’s proposed plans to close off the streets that currently feed into El Cerrito Plaza. We live on the one street that currently stops short of the creek and think it’s a great idea. I’m sure the neighbors would welcome the reduction in traffic that we currently enjoy.
You could then launch a project to daylight the portions of the creek that are currently under the streets! If you do this, however, you will probably want to have footbridges built so people can walk to the shopping plaza. I’ve been hoping that there is already a plan in the works to make a foot bridge at the end of our street. There is a de facto short-cut path, which I’m sure you’ve seen, that runs alongside the creek over to the next street. In fact, there’s a photo of someone walking on this path on your web site! It is currently nearly too muddy to use, and certainly too muddy for my non-all-terrain stroller.
We try to be good neighbors for our little creek. My husband has occasionally fished debris out, although a couple of times some hooligans pushed shopping carts into the creek, and we could not retrieve them.
I have two pressing questions for you. Once in a while I see folks harvesting some plants down by the water (not, I hope, to sell at the farmers market the next day!). What sort of greens are they gathering? And when do the frogs come back? We just moved here last June and they were going strong. I miss them!
Your Humble Servant,
Liz Mann
