At the heart of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, just a few miles from the confluence of the two rivers that give it its name, sits a miniature Delta, complete to scale and frozen in concrete.

The interactive artwork is part of an $11.7 million project to build a research, education and recreation facility in the Delta. It's the fruition of nearly two decades of effort by the East Bay Regional Park District and a coalition of local stakeholders in Contra Costa County.

"This whole development we have here is part of a greater dream called the Delta Science Center," said Mike Moran, naturalist for Big Break Regional Shoreline, waving at the pier, amphitheater and 50-foot-long Delta map. A prefabricated visitor center to hold exhibits, class space and a field study lab is under construction and expected to open next year.

"One reason why this map is really important is the location where we're standing is really critical," said Nancy Kaiser, interpretive services manager for the park district.

The park is an island of natural space in an intensely developed landscape. Homes of the community of Oakley flank its southern border. Agricultural fields, industrial facilities, wind turbines and the immense arch of the Antioch bridge frame the view across the water.

They are all connected by the many fingers of water flowing through the large system that is the Delta.

"We bring people of all ages, and schoolchildren and classes, to this spot," said Kaiser. "We can share that message of watersheds and the water systems, and how critical it is, not to just us as people, but to the ecosystems and the wildlife."

The California Coastal Conservancy contributed $400,000 for the Delta model, created by the Bay Area company Scientific Art Studio. The company also made the world's largest baseball mitt for the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park.

For the Delta model, the company machined a foam mold from 3-D digital models with a computer-controlled router, and cast the model in concrete with a high polyester content. The wife of Scientific Art Studio founder Ron Holthuysen, painter Maren Van Duyn, led a team that stained the mural landscape to match aerial images.

Photoprints of satellite imagery on special ceramic tiles depict the cities, and the roads are steel ribbons. An acrylic topcoat protects the art from fingers, feet and weather.

Moran regularly stands on the map, using it as a guide to the Delta. He said the model, complete in early June, has already inspired great conversations with visitors about the science, history, American Indian culture and complicated water politics of the Delta.

"What we have here are dramatic changes, seasonally, and even daily," said Moran, which makes Big Break an interesting spot for scientists, and a difficult puzzle for conservationists and water managers. In the Delta, everything is interconnected, and nothing is simple. It's a message he's happy to share with visitors.

"This is a big connection spot," said Moran. "If you look over there on a clear day, you see the Sierra Nevada. That's where the water comes from."

He pointed at the map at his feet. "When you look at this beautiful landscape, you're standing on it, right here, in scale."

Residents of the Delta like to find their homes on the accurate reproduction, which includes Sacramento and six other cities. Visitors can even pour water through the model's river channels and watch its slow progress to Suisun Bay.

The progress of the science center from idea to reality has also flowed slowly. Conceived in the mid-1990s by a coalition of local educators, businesses, wildlife advocates and the East Bay park district, the project changed shape and direction many times over the years. Backers had a common interest but a big mix of people, priorities and agendas.

"We, of course, are in it for the birds," said Joel Summerhill of Mount Diablo Audubon, "one of the early instigators of the project." But he said the plan always called for a comprehensive education center.

The park district purchased Big Break Shoreline in 2000, and offered the location, and funding, for the science center. The district is guiding development, while the original science center coalition is designing Delta educational programs for the center and for area schools.

"Science is getting slimmer and slimmer and slimmer in the classroom" as math and reading take precedence, said Roni Gehlke, executive director of the coalition.

Moran and Kaiser expect the new facility to be a great tool for hands-on education, particularly for city kids who rarely have the opportunity to get their hands into marsh mud. That students don't know where the Delta is, what it is, or why it is important "never gets more apparent than when you take a boat ride with the kids," said Gehlke.

The Science Center is set to challenge that gap.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Liza Lester, (916) 321-1067.

• Read more articles by Liza Lester