Lake Merritt Channel and Flood Control Station

Oakland’s “Lake Merritt” is actually not a lake but part of the remains of an estuary system leading to the SF bay. The channel is the narrow portion of the estuary between the lake and the bay, just a few blocks in length, running from the southern point of the lake to below the Nimitz freeway.

Passing thorugh the area for years while commuting, it became one of my favorite places to test out camera gear and birdwatch. It’s also been a good place to find scenes of construction, which are always fun, as efforts to improve the ecological health of the waterway (and, less benignly, to beautify the area and make it more gentrifier-friendly) have seen the removal of some of the asphalt covering parts of the channel and the widening and clearing of choke points to allow water (and its inhabitants) to move more freely.

The flood control station, which is also the boundary where 7th Street turns into East 8th Street (to the persistent frustration of people giving and following driving directions inthe vicinity), was built after the city experienced severe flooding in the 60’s that extended well into downtown.

At the surface level, the flood control station just looks like a street bridge with pedestrian underpasses. However, internally, it’s actually a two-storey(ish) structure housing massive diesel pumps that can be used to regulate the level of the channel on either side. In practice, these pumps are hardly ever actually used, because even when there are flooding concerns, the water level can normally still be adequately controlled by opening and closing the gates.