Dredging Lake Temescal

Opinion Article

Feb 15

by Jeffery Kahn, Contra Costa Road, Oakland

Lake Temescal Regional Recreation Area has been a crown jewel of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) since 1936. Located in the Oakland/Berkeley urban core of the East Bay, the park and its beach once was a mecca for hundreds of swimmers on sunny summer days. No more. Today, the lake is dying due to sedimentation causing perpetual toxic algae blooms.

Once 80-feet deep, Lake Temescal is now an average of 7-feet deep, which inevitably leads to these chronic algae blooms. The green slime is why you do not see swimmers in the water. In fact, at times, there are signs warning park users to not even let their dogs go in the lake. To resurrect the lake, it must be dredged to a healthy depth, a determination made by a 2019 engineering study for the EBRPD with a cost estimate of about $20 million.

For six years, a group of us now known as the Friends of Lake Temescal has urged the EBRPD board to act on its study and fund the dredging project. And for six years, the board has declined to fund the project to the save the lake, the heart of a park visited by some 250,000 people every year. To those of us who live in the Rockridge community, it is a prized nearby place to enjoy the Great Outdoors.

The good news: On Dec. 16, 2025, the EBRPD board adopted its 2026 budget that, for the first time, includes the Lake Temescal restoration project. The bad news: Out of its $431 million budget, the board allocated only $800,000 to the project, not enough to even pay for the work necessary to nail down how much it will cost to get the Lake Temescal dredging project ready to go out for bid.

The park district’s 2019 study details what must be done prior to putting the project out for bid. The study estimated costs (in 2019 dollars) of $1.575 million for sediment characterization, geotechnical evaluations, environmental and technical studies. Repeatedly over the past year, many of us have asked the board to fund the full cost of this work, including State Senator Jesse Arreguín, State Assembly member Buffy Wicks, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, and Oakland council member Zac Unger. In December, the EBRPD board declined to do so.

The Friends of Lake Temescal will be interacting with park staff in the coming year to push this project forward. You can keep track of developments online at the Friends of Lake Temescal Facebook site. Meanwhile, if you deeply care about this issue, write Park District Acting General Manager Max Korten at generalmanager@ebparks.org and tell him how much you value the Lake Temescal Regional Recreation Area, and that you want the park district to use this $800,000 to develop a plan that will actually save our dying lake.