Two years ago, the University of California excavated the contaminated mud from its Richmond Field Station marshland, trucked it off to a class 2 dump site, and replaced it with clean mud from Martinez.

It's clean enough that today, school and community groups don rubber boots and trek out to the marsh to pull weeds and plant native plant species.

"We just had a second-grade class out here," said UC spokeswoman Christine Schaff. "When they come back in a couple years they'll see the fruits of their labors."

That's not the way its neighbor, Simeon Cherokee, is going about its own marsh restoration, said Wendy Strickland, executive director of the Watershed Project (formerly the Aquatics Outreach Institute), a nonprofit organization that contracts with the university to nurture the wetlands.

"It's very unfortunate they called (its proposed development) Campus Bay," because that leads people to believe the two are partners, Schaff said.

"Our approach is to work with the community to do the restoration properly," Strickland said. "There is no comparison."

Simeon Cherokee and the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, which until last month had complete authority over remediation for a proposed development project, have come under fire for failing to include the community in its planning.

After a November legislative hearing called by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, state officials transferred oversight for much of the work to the stricter Department of Toxic Substances Control.

UC's work has been done in three phases. Additional work is proposed for nearby Meeker Slough in fall 2006.

The restoration of west Stege Marsh, which began in 2003, includes planting native species, weed removal, trapping feral animals and long-term monitoring of the area.

"The time we can do the work is restricted by many things, including the clapper rail" nesting season during the spring months, Schaff said.

The waterfront span and its marshland have a colorful, and caustic, history. More than 100 years of pesticide, herbicide, sulfuric acid, and blasting cap manufacture ravaged the land and water.

A bit of an old pier, built in the 1800s to ferry in grain for horses and ferry out then-plentiful red-legged frogs for restaurants across the Bay, remains. From 1877 to 1948 it was used by the California Blasting Cap Company.

The decaying wood actually provides habitat for small ecosystems in the marsh.

Native cordgrass and pickleweed harbor the California clapper rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse -- both endangered species.

The university is recreating and nurturing this original habitat.

"We're collecting native plant species," Strickland said. "This is something UC has talked about for 20 years. A slough separates the Stege Marsh from our side. We've done half our marsh, and that's the part we take the kids into."

As for Simeon Cherokee, "We have nothing to do with them," Strickland said.