Town Manager Virgil Koehne is doing his best to clean up Discovery Bay's waterways, which is no small task. So while he muscled the help of professors and students from the University of California, Berkeley, he employed nature's help, too.

He's using wetlands to tidy things up a bit, mostly because it's efficient and great for the environment. "I wanted to try to develop something that will help the town clean up things without costing it two arms and a leg, and to do it naturally, without using chemicals," said Koehne.

It'll cost the town roughly $225,000, which is significantly cheaper than what it would cost if the town were to do the cleaning chemically. The job includes wetlands construction, lab testing and test results.

Through the use of plants and algae, the wetlands will remove unwanted levels of copper, aluminum and pharmaceuticals from local waste treatment plants' discharges into the Delta. Those plants meet state requirements by removing 60 percent of these pollutants; however, more needs to be done.

The two-year trial period will include the planting of cattails and bulrushes by Berkeley professors Alex Horne and David Sedlak.

So exactly how do plants and algae eradicate copper?

Through a process called phytoremediation, the plants mediate contaminants by the simple act of growing and dying. "Phytoremediation can be defined as the cleanup of pollutants primarily mediated by photosynthetic plants," wrote Horne in "Phytoremediation by Constructed Wetlands" (1999).

"Cleanup" to Horne is the destruction, inactivation, or immobilization of the pollutant in a harmless fashion.

The culprit of excess copper in the Delta waterways, he said, might have much to do with Discovery Bay's new copper pipes. "There's a lot of copper pipes in Discovery Bay," said Horne, "and because they're newer, they bleed more. Older homes - the copper wouldn't bleed off."

The good news/bad news scenario is that although the extra copper and metals do not pose a threat for humans, treatment is necessary "for our gilly (fish) friends," as Horne put it.

Horne has built wetlands all over the world, mostly to take nitrate out, not so much for copper. "This is the first case we've had to take out copper at these levels." But the levels are not too high, Horne said.

Copper levels at the treatment plant are between 50 and 100 parts per billion. "We need to bring the levels down about 10 parts per billion."

When completed, Koehne said the wetlands will consist of six ponds (called cells), two of them divided up in to thirds: one concrete, one made out of a geo fabric (mesh type material), and the third with a rubber liner.

Horne, who taught at Berkeley for 32 years, did initial research on algae in lakes, oceans and wetlands in four continents in 1964, said Koehne. Greg Harris of Herwit Engineering in Clayton designed the plumbing that moves the water in and out where needed.

"They supervised the preparation of the soil and construction of the wetland baffles (static device used to regulate fluid flow) prior to planting," Koehne said.

If all goes according to plan, they'll increase their efforts to a larger scale. "I love to try to do things as naturally as possible," said Koehne. "If it doesn't work out, we spent little money in trying. You learn from this, and other facilities can learn from it, whether we failed or succeeded."