Mission Bay Plan Update
Posy McKinney | Published on 7/31/2025
In May of 2024, The San Diego City Council approved a substantial wetlands restoration plan focusing on advancing wetland restoration in the northeast corner of Mission Bay. The ReWild Coalition continued to advocate for maximum wetland restoration focusing on funding sources and urging the city to act on the De Anza Natural and Fiesta Island wetland plans. There is a dedicated funding source for wetland, water quality and habitat projects in Mission Bay Regional Park due to a voter-approved fund created in 2008, the “Mission Bay Improvement Fund”. The fund can only be spent in Mission Bay and wetland expansion is the highest unfunded priority.
This week, the City Council approved a 10 year lease extension with Campland on the Bay and the Mission Bay RV Resort. This means nearly 1,000 waterfront campsites in Mission Bay’s northeast corner will remain in place for another decade. The lease extensions come just over a year after the council approved plans to transform most of northeastern Mission Bay, including the current 50 acre Campland site into climate friendly marshland. Because of the plan, the lease extensions stipulate that the city can terminate them within two years notice if city officials secure the funding and approvals from the state Coastal Commission that it needs to begin the transformation. The Coastal Commission has deemed that the conceptual plan for The De Anza Natural Restoration in incomplete, citing that it is not detailed about how some of the bays shoreline would be reshaped. Also, federal funding for marshland and other climate resilience projects are in jeopardy under the Trump administration.
The ReWild Coalition and other environmental groups that have lobbied for the Mission Bay marshland plan have signed off on this lease extension, citing the two year termination clause. These groups will be pushing for the marshland transformation to begin during the 10 year timeline of the leases. See this article