Photos: Redwood City May 2004

A little more than a year after I took that first batch of Redwood City Photos, I was still working in the not-so-scenic Pacific Shores office park in Redwood City. There were still empty parking lots, junk piles, and gravel pits. But there were some new things: drained salt ponds and hazardous waste abatement! So I took some more photos.

	Openwave was going through hard times and closed off half of their building for a tax write-off. I'm not exactly sure how that works. Anyhow, even though that part of the building is closed off, sometimes you can see lights on inside. It's very spooky.
	Recently, workers have drained some of the local salt ponds. Gerry Kane heard that someone is building a marina here. As you can see in this poorly-stitched together panorama, most of the salt water has been drained. The workers have laid down these big sheets of black stuff that come in rolls. Then they pile rock on top of the sheets.
	That sure is some salty water, yup.
	How do you make sure that your drained wetland doesn't revert to a marsh? You lay down these big rolls of stuff and then you pile rock on top of that stuff, perhaps to provide some drainage.
	There wasn't any construction going on in this salt pond. But it wasn't a pond at the moment. It was just a big plain. Maybe that's all salt on the ground. I don't know if this is part of the normal salt harvesting process or if it's a side effect of all the construction going on in the neighboring ex-ponds.
	The rail cars are still there.
	Though the railcars are still there, the rails are in poor shape. I don't think those railcars are going anywhere soon.
	Recently, a big pile of red dirt showed up at the local hazardous waste site.
	I used to think that the hazardous waste site was icky-looking, but now it looks pretty good in the evening light.
	I guess that the red dirt is supposed to absorb some of the toxins out of the soil.
	Right now, the red dirt is mostly piled up in one place, but you can see that earthmoving equipment is spreading it around to form a layer over the whole site.
	It might be nice if they left some of the dirt piled up high into cliff-like formations for a while. It wouldn't help with the hazardous waste abatement, but it would brighten up the place a little.
	Every so often, people will hear me whine about the lack of restaurants around the office. "There's nothing within a mile!" I say. Actually, there's one place that's about a mile away--it might be within a mile. The restaurant is also just a few yards away from the hazardous waste site.
	This boat wasn't going anywhere.
	Then it got dark, so I went to catch my bus.

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