Contra Costa County Public Works crews this week began a long-term project to remove accumulated sediment and other material from an area of the Walnut Creek channel in Concord.

The project aims to remove about 115,000 cubic yards of silt in the creek channel to restore flow.

Project manager Randolf Sanders said the material will fill 1,200 truckloads over 80 days. That is around 250 trips a day. Marathon Petroleum Corporation will be storing the material on their property for a future wetland rehabilitation, he said.

The Walnut Creek channel appears in an undated Google Street View image looking north from the Iron Horse Regional Trail pedestrian bridge in Concord. County public works crews will remove 115,000 cubic yards of silt from the channel this summer. (Google image)

There will be road-side message boards and traffic redirections, but drivers near the Walnut Creek channel around Concord Avenue should consider alternative routes.

Drivers should expect delays of 5-15 minutes at Meridian Park Boulevard and Willow Way, from Via de Mercados to Concord Avenue, and Waterworld Parkway to Willow Pass Road.

Over $5 million in funding for this project is provided by Flood Control Zone 3B Funds. More information about the project can be found on the Public Works website.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.