The Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve gained a new piece of shoreline on Sept. 10, 2026. It is about 500 feet of gently sloped earth near the Byxbee Park vehicle entrance, planted with more than 2,000 native plants, and it is watered by the treatment plant next door. Palo Alto Online reported that it is the Bay Area's first nature-based horizontal levee. Officials at the opening called it a model for other bayfront cities.
A single walk past it this month shows young plants on a slope. The city named it the Horizontal Levee Pilot Project, and researchers will study it for years. Visitors can join in by taking a photo at a fixed spot and emailing it in. The levee is designed to change, so it shows the most to people who come back several times, and this winter's tide calendar gives you good dates to come back on.
What actually got built at Harbor Marsh
Construction started on Sept. 8, 2025, and finished in August 2026, at a cost of $4.6 million. The levee sits between the bay's tidal channels and the city's Regional Water Quality Control Plant at 2501 Embarcadero Way. The city's event listing gives its address as 2470 Embarcadero Road.
Its shape is what sets it apart. Traditional levees are steep walls of rock and concrete. This one is a long, low slope of vegetated soil that runs down into the tidal channels. The city says the project restores freshwater marsh, wet meadow and riparian scrub habitat. That habitat supports species known to use the surrounding marsh, including the endangered Ridgway's rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.
Local groups did much of the planting. The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, Save the Bay, Nuestra Casa and Environmental Volunteers grew and planted the native plants. They also wrote the signs that cover the marsh's ecological and social history.
Why the plants drink from the treatment plant
Putting it next to the wastewater plant was the design choice that made the project work. The levee is watered with the plant's treated effluent, which gives that water one more round of natural filtering before it reaches the bay. In 2023 coverage from Palo Alto Online, the city's plan called for a 1,650-foot underground pipeline from the plant to the site, running along Embarcadero Road and Harbor Road. The same story described it as the first levee of its kind to use treated wastewater for irrigation.
That makes the levee part of a much bigger piece of local infrastructure. The plant treats wastewater from Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Stanford University. It is partway through a $369 million renovation that began in 2022 and is scheduled to finish in 2028. So the 500 feet of marsh you can walk past are one visible piece of a system that serves much of the Midpeninsula.
Mayor Vicki Veenker described the dual purpose to Palo Alto Online:
"It has both good habitat restoration and climate adaptation in one. We have a lot of projects that do one or the other, this does both."
A "permanent pilot," and what the white poles are measuring
The project has gone by the same nickname since the planning stage. In 2023, a city project lead described it to Palo Alto Online as a "permanent pilot program." It is permanent because it stays, and a pilot because it is meant to serve as an example for future work, possibly including a larger levee closer to the plant. The Parks and Recreation Commission backed it unanimously that March, at a time when nearby Baylands projects were drawing heated debate.
Some of the small white poles sticking up between the plants are measuring tools. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, California State University Channel Islands and UC Davis will use them over the coming years to track how the levee responds to tides and sea-level changes. The city says it is also running vegetation surveys, tracking how soil builds up on the slope over time, and studying habitat suitability for species like the salt marsh harvest mouse.
All of that work compares the site against itself over time. The plants are new and the soil has barely settled, so most of the change researchers want to see has not happened yet.
The photo station on the Baylands Trail
The city has made that comparison a public job too. Its project page says there are photo monitoring stations next to the levee on the Baylands Trail. You take a picture from the fixed spot and email it to [email protected]. Over time, photos taken from the same spot build into a time-lapse of the marsh filling in. The same page says more ways to help will be posted as the project goes on. It also describes bioblitzes, where groups document as many species as they can find, and says the city will compare pre- and post-construction results to see whether native biodiversity is rising.
Getting there is simple. The September ribbon-cutting also opened a relocated, widened trail connection for hikers and bicyclists, linking to the Baylands Preserve, the Byxbee Park trails and the San Francisco Bay Trail. The 2023 plans said a section of the Marsh Front Trail would move closer to Embarcadero Road, away from the salt marsh, and get about 80 feet shorter. If you walked that stretch before construction, expect a slightly different route now. A small platform reaches out over the tidal channel, and visitors were invited to stop there for photos on opening day.
The preserve is open 8 a.m. to sunset and has 15 miles of multi-use trails. For the ceremony, the city warned that parking at the site was limited and pointed people to free parking at 1900 Embarcadero Road, about a five-minute walk away. That advice was for the event only. On a normal weekday it is still a useful fallback to know about.
Three tide windows this winter
The levee slopes down into tidal channels, so the water line is a big part of what you see. The highest tides of the season make a natural set of dates for a repeat visit. The California King Tides Project lists these statewide dates:
- Nov. 24–26, 2026, Thanksgiving week
- Dec. 23–25, 2026
- Jan. 21–22, 2027
The project notes that Northern California locations may also see King Tides on Dec. 22, Jan. 20 or Jan. 23. Exact times vary by spot, so check the project's tide map before you head out. The project does not single out the Baylands as a viewing spot. It invites photos from any California location affected by the tides, which means a shot from the levee's photo station counts for both programs.
A photo now, another during Thanksgiving week, and a third in January will show the young plants against three very different water levels. That is the same kind of record the researchers are building.
Fitting it into a Baylands morning
The levee is a short walk from the preserve's other public stops, and each keeps its own hours. A loop that fits all of them:
- Start at the EcoCenter, Environmental Volunteers' building at 2560 Embarcadero Road, across from the Duck Pond. Admission is free. Regular hours are Fridays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. plus at least one Saturday a month, though hours change with the season and docent availability. This Saturday, Oct. 17, a free Science Saturday runs 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with outdoor hands-on activities about spiders, snakes and owls. The building itself will be closed that day for a training event. Environmental Volunteers also helped plant the levee and write its signs.
- Walk to the levee and the photo station on the Baylands Trail, then out to the platform over the channel.
- Stop at the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center if it's a weekend. It is open Saturday noon to 3 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and closed Monday through Friday.
- Finish in Byxbee Park on the new trail connection. The park's earthworks sit among walking and bicycle trails, and it has drinking fountains and restrooms. It is open sunrise to sunset.
For a longer day of bayfront restoration, Mountain View finished restoring 435 acres of former salt pond into tidal marsh earlier this year. Palo Alto Online noted that project has some similar effects. Seeing the two back to back shows the difference in scale between a 500-foot pilot and a restored salt pond.
Public Works Director Brad Eggleston told the crowd at the opening, as Palo Alto Online reported, that the city hopes the project "informs other levees in the Bay Area." The photos visitors send from the Baylands Trail station will be part of the record that answers that.
If the Baylands are part of your week and you're curious how projects like this play out across the Midpeninsula, Sandra Darrow is always glad to talk Palo Alto, at any stage. Schedule a free, personalized market consultation whenever it's useful, even if all you want to compare is notes on the trails.
