Countywide Fish Passage Improvement

Abstract:

 In the fight to save salmonids, barriers to fish passage are an important issue. In Santa Clara County, over 350 sites have been investigated to evaluate fish passage in the San Francisquito Creek, Stevens Creek, Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek Watersheds.  About 20% of these sites need action to improve fish passage or should be monitored to observe whether the situation deteriorates.  Through a number of programs, the SCVWD is remediating many of the fish passage barriers that they own. But the fish passage barriers are owned by a broad range of agencies or owners, who may or may not have interest or resources to remediate them.  This project would identify barriers to fish passage in all of the county's streams known to support steelhead and evaluate which sites created the most serious impediments.  Based on the priority list, partnerships would be pursued to address the most serious fish passage issues no matter who owned them.  A system would be established to inspect the improved sites, pursue needed maintenance and evaluate which methodologies functioned best. 

Purpose: To provide for water supply and flood protection, dams have been built that have the unfortunate consequence of cutting off steelhead trout from habitat they may have been able to reach many years ago. There is still habitat below these dams that steelhead can use, if they can make it past the partial fish barriers formed by numerous man-made infrastructure such as bridge foundations, dams and channel stabilization structures. Because the amount of habitat that these fish have access to is reduced, it is important that they reach what is still available to them. These structures are owned by a wide range of agencies or people with differeing levels of interest and resources for fish protection. Some of these structures may no longer have a useful purpose, such as old agricultural dams. Improving the most serious impediments to fish passage is needed to help with the recovery of steelhead trout in Santa Clara County.

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Watersed Management Strategies:

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