Thursday August 1, 2024
NOAA Fisheries via Maven’s Notebook —
The operation of Daguerre Point Dam, which was constructed to contain debris resulting from Gold Rush-era mining and currently supports irrigation diversions from the Yuba River, jeopardizes threatened and endangered species, including spring-run Chinook salmon, steelhead, and Southern Resident killer whales, NOAA Fisheries has found.
The century-old dam includes two poorly functioning fish ladders that can block a large percentage of salmon and all sturgeon from high-quality habitat upstream. NOAA Fisheries’ determination came in a biological opinion following consultation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under the Endangered Species Act. The finding follows years of scrutiny and litigation fueled by concerns about the impacts of the dam that was constructed to contain gravel and debris from historical gold mining.
NOAA Fisheries called for the Corps of Engineers, which owns and operates the dam, to take steps to make the most of the existing fish ladders for salmon passage, as long as the dam is in place. Reliable passage would benefit declining populations of steelhead and boost spring-run Chinook salmon. Once the most abundant California salmon and a foundation of commercial fisheries, spring-run Chinook salmon are now limited to a handful of populations at high risk of extinction.