MENLO PARK, Calif. (KGO) -- In case you missed it, the San Francisco Bay just got bigger. Cheers went up as crews breached a levee just a few hundred yards from Highway 101 near Menlo Park. And as a crowd watched from a nearby hilltop, waters poured into a former industrial salt pond, 300 acres that will slowly and steadily turn into the Bay Area's newest tidal marsh.

"Nature can really restore itself. In many cases if we give it a chance, if we give it a head start, we give it a push. And that's what we're doing here," says David Lewis, director of the nonprofit Save the Bay.
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"And we've involved so many people as volunteers in this work. And each of those people who gets to touch the bay and see the results. We're really we're really planting seeds for the future generations to continue this work," he adds.

The late Senator Dianne Feinstein worked to acquire the site from the Cargill Corporation. State managers say when the tidal marsh begins growing in, it will provide critical habitat for birds and wildlife along with a multitude of other benefits.