The Richardson Bay Regional Agency, a local joint powers authority, has secured $5.2 million in additional grants for projects to remove marine debris and restore eelgrass habitat.

The grants are part of a 10-year plan to clean and restore the ecosystem that had been degraded by decades of damage and waste disposal by a community of people living aboard vessels anchored in the waters between Sausalito and Tiburon.

The latest grants include $3.051 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency San Francisco Bay Program for removing trash and debris from the Bay floor. A second award of $1.9 million from the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority will be used to plant up to 6 acres of new eelgrass beds. That fund is supported by a regional voter-approved tax measure to support environmental restoration in San Francisco Bay.

The agency also recently received a $250,000 grant from the Marin Community Foundation to support efforts to map the Richardson Bay seabed through the use of autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs.

Eelgrass provides habitat for fish and wildlife, helps filter water and stabilizes Bay sediments.

Eel grass on Richardson Bay, a shallow, ecologically rich arm of San Francisco Bay in Calif., on July 13, 2023. (Ray Saint Germain/Bay City News)

RBRA serves Belvedere, Mill Valley, Tiburon and unincorporated Southern Marin.

In August, the agency celebrated the placement of the final boat resident into permanent housing through the organization’s Temporary Housing Support Program, launched with $3 million in state funds in 2023.

However, RBRA spokesperson Will Reisman said in an email Thursday that one remaining vessel remains anchored out. The individual is enrolled in a program to bring his boat up to code, according to a deadline agreement between the RBRA and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

“He’s eligible to stay on the anchorage until the Oct. 15 deadline,” Reisman said. “He’s actively working on a new living arrangement and should have a solution soon.”

In 2025, the RBRA announced it had removed about 4,000 pounds of litter, refuse and other discarded objects from Richardson Bay.

That work began in 2022 with $3 million from the U.S. EPA.

The RBRA has also received annual grants starting in 2020, ranging from $100,000 to $275,000, from the Surrendered and Abandoned Vessel Exchange program of the California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways. That program supports local public agencies to remove abandoned boats from waterways and allows boat owners to surrender unwanted recreational vessels for free disposal instead of abandoning them.

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.