Aside from that controversial patch near Redwood City, salt ponds around the bay are being restored to wetlands.

The Merc’s Paul Rogers reports this morning on the latest project:

For decades, motorists zooming over the Dumbarton Bridge have had a fairly stark view as they approached Menlo Park: a muddy industrial salt pond, streaked with white saline markings and devoid of much life.

That landscape is about to change, with the completion of the latest wetlands restoration project in the ongoing renaissance of San Francisco Bay and its shoreline.

The site is just a piece of 16,500 of acres of salt ponds that Cargill Salt sold to the government in 2003 for $100 million. The idea is to convert the areas back to marshland, which would provide a home for a number of fish and fowl species and also act as a filter for pollution in the bay.

The one piece that Cargill didn’t sell is now the center of a heated debate. Cargill has hired DMB Associates to develop the salt ponds near Redwood City into thousands of new homes. Environmentalists want to see the site restored to wetlands.