HAYWARD — State Sen. Bob Wieckowski is the one who gained legislative approval to rename the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve after the late Rep. Fortney H. “Pete” Stark.
But credit for the idea to rename something after Stark belongs to U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who suggested it to honor the 20-term East Bay congressman after he died in January 2020.
Wieckowski joined the Stark family; retired Rep. John Burton; Charlton “Chuck” Bonham, the director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife; and David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay nonprofit on Thursday to unveil new signage in a ceremony recognizing the now-renamed Congressman Pete Stark Ecological Reserve at Eden Landing.
But how and why did they choose to rename this 6,400-acre stretch of restored salt ponds, diked marshes and transitional areas to uplands after Stark?
Colleagues and loved ones recounted at the renaming ceremony how Stark fought and won to stop the Shorelands Corporation from developing this land into a 740-acre complex that would have featured a racetrack, theme park, research and development offices and an RV park in the 1980s. The company gave up its efforts in 1990.
“Congressman Stark was instrumental in stopping the racetrack that was going to go in here,” Wieckowski said, adding that Stark understood the relationship between health and our environment. “This recognition will forever honor Congressman Fortney H. Stark’s decades of service in protecting our environment and future generations.”
Stark was first elected to Congress in 1972 and served until 2012. Expanding access to affordable health care is what Wieckowski considered Stark’s primary achievement in Congress.
After Shorelands Corporation abandoned its development plans, Stark worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein to secure $6 million toward the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, which is the largest restoration project of its kind on the West Coast at 15,100 acres — 6,400 of which now bear Stark’s name. His son Jeff Stark, who serves as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, said his dad would be thrilled at the renaming.
Stark’s other son, Fortney “Fish” H. Stark III, said his dad had an entrepreneur’s limitless optimism, believing that if you questioned the conventional wisdom enough, you never had to accept the status quo and that a little subversiveness was the key to enlightenment.
“The right thing to do to Pete Stark was always everything you could to make life better for those who were worse off, while anything else was the wrong thing,” Fish Stark said. “He was fierce in his defense of the underdog, children, poor, elderly, people of color — and fiercer still in his disdain for wealth hoarders, war profiteers, bigots and bullies. He was not a fan of politeness or parlor games.
“To him, making peoples’ lives better was a matter of life or death urgency … his life’s work is proof of what can happen if we believe that better things are possible and fight for them.”
The broader salt pond restoration project is more than two decades in the making now and is the result of regional conservation efforts that culminated in agribusiness giant Cargill agreeing to sell the land and return most of the southern shores to natural conditions not seen since California became a state.
Lewis of Save the Bay said he has been visiting the ponds over those 20 years of restoration and has enjoyed the privilege of seeing what nature can do when humans give it a chance, get out of the way and give it a little help. As he credited Stark with teaching him how to be a moral force when he spoke, Lewis added that he is looking forward to saying on his next trip here that he’s going not to Eden Landing, but instead to “Stark. Stark Reserve.”
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