Ventura County Star
By Kathleen Wilson
May 5, 2012

Ventura County officials are seeking a state grant to restore steelhead trout to creek waters where none of the endangered fish has been found in years, if not decades.

In late March, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors authorized managers to go after a grant of almost $243,000 for a feasibility study and preliminary design work for a fish passage in Pole Creek, east of Fillmore.

Supervisor Peter Foy voted no, questioning whether it made sense to build the structure estimated to cost as much as $4 million for a species no longer found in upper Pole Creek.

“I’m just struggling with this,” he said before the board moved ahead with grant applications to defray the costs of a variety of environmental projects, including the fish passage.

“We see there’s no fish; there’s nothing up there.”

Foy said he was concerned that environmental requirements were hurting the ability of state and county governments to pay for needed projects.

Far from being a government boondoggle, though, regulators say the structure should allow a way for the prized trout to migrate from the ocean and reproduce in what are believed to be their historic spawning grounds. County officials say the passage would be some type of fish ladder, a structure that generally allows fish to jump along a series of steps to get past dams and concrete channels.

The steelhead cannot get through a flood-control channel on Pole Creek, said Mark Capelli, who coordinates steelhead recovery for the National Marine Fisheries Service. He said the waters run at extremely high velocities through the steep and impermeable concrete channel, which was built from 1969 to 1974. The structure also lacks resting spots for the fish along the way, he said.

“It’s like trying to swim up a fire hose,” he said.

Peter B. Moyle, professor of fish biology at UC Davis, said the absence of the steelhead won’t prevent them from returning. They should migrate during spawning season, as long as the fish passage is designed well and water flows are sufficient. Nature will take over, he said.

“They could move up and start spawning within a week,” he said.

A state Department of Fish and Game study done in 2007 and two more by county consultants failed to turn up any sightings of the trout in an upper reach of Pole Creek. That’s the area where the habitat is considered good enough for the fish to spawn, assuming they get there.

The studies cited newspaper articles published in Fillmore and Santa Paula as some evidence that steelhead were present in the early 1900s. The state study also found support in the fact that the trout were found in creeks lying upstream and downstream of Pole Creek, based on a report made in 2003.

Typically, whenever steelhead are found in one tributary of a major water route in Southern California, they’re found in the others, Capelli said.

“The more we have looked in the past 10 years, the more evidence we have found for fish occupying these habitats,” he said.

Capelli said steelhead in Southern California numbered 40,000 to 45,000 in the 1930s before the state’s large wave of dam construction began.

Recreational fishermen prized them because they were such strong swimmers and large — they can exceed 3 feet in length, he said. They were so popular that hotels sponsored special rates and rooms during the brief period from November to February when the adult fish moved from the ocean into fresh water to spawn.

But the mighty trout rapidly declined in the post-World War II era, as the human population in Southern California surged and land and water supplies were developed. That construction reduced flows in streams and blocked access to the waters where the steelhead spawned, Capelli said.

By 1997, the fish were listed as a federally endangered species, numbering less than 500 in terms of the population of spawning adult steelhead. Capelli doubts the number has changed much, and says while there’s been a lot of talk about restoring them, actual efforts have only begun.

He authored a 600-page recovery plan issued in January. Capelli projects it will take decades to accomplish, but says the resilient steelhead can come back. The plan is not just about fish, he said. It promises an assortment of benefits from cleaner water to better recreational opportunities, he said.

The cost of restoration in Ventura County has been estimated at upward of $459 million and in Southern California at $2.1 billion.

County Public Works Director Jeff Pratt doubts the channel is the sole reason steelhead don’t make it through Pole Creek. But he urged the board to allow managers to go after the grant for the fish ladder, saying he saw no way around it. The state Department of Fish and Game is adamant that fish ladders need to be added to the creek, he told the board.

“They’ve indicated they’re going to die on the sword to get fish passage through that channel,” he said. He estimated the cost of the completed structure at $3 million to $4 million, although other officials put it in the range of $1 million to $2 million.

The concrete channel went in 40 years ago, a time when protections for endangered species and other environmental concerns were much lower than they are today. The steelhead were not considered endangered in 1973, when federal law prohibited harm to species listed as endangered.

But by 2005, a flood had struck Ventura County, forcing a variety of repairs, including one at Pole Creek. When county watershed protection officials tried to get permits to repair the damage, Fish and Game officials told them the existing channel violated laws protecting the endangered trout. They agreed then to address the fish passage issue when they expand the channel’s capacity to protect Fillmore in the event of a 100-year flood.

Peter Sheydayi, deputy director of the Ventura County Watershed Protection District, said the district lacks the money to expand the capacity. But it’s unlikely the district could get the permits to enlarge it without addressing the fish passage, he said.The grant comes from a restoration program funded by state bond money and federal dollars. A state spokesman said the absence of fish would not necessarily work against the county’s application. The process is “very competitive,” and applicants must meet a variety of standards, including reasonable costs and likelihood of success, said Andrew Hughan, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game.

Generally speaking, steelhead eventually will return to an unoccupied creek if they can get through and the habitat is suitable, he said in an email.”As for Pole Creek, it is very close to Sespe Creek, one of the best wild trout streams in Southern California,” he said. “It should not take very long for Sespe fish to colonize Pole Creek.”

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