Wednesday October 30, 2024
Trout Unlimited —
If April is the cruelest month, October is the least cruel. The summer heat finally breaks, trees explode in color, big orange caddis bounce around and salmon and steelhead are pushing into rivers.
October is also the end of the construction season for many Trout Unlimited restoration projects. Such projects can take years to move from concept through design and planning to construction––which, ironically, may take only a few days.
Exhibit A is TU’s Pickell’s Dam removal on Little Arthur Creek, a tributary to the Pajaro River, an important watershed for South-Central Coastal steelhead on the California coast.
Pickell’s Dam had long been the biggest impediment to steelhead passage in this stream. At 30 feet high and built more than a century ago, the dam prevented fish passage at all flows to more than three miles of good spawning and rearing habitat. This project, led by TU’s Central Coast steelhead project manager Tim Frahm, was completed in early October and took five years from start to finish, although bulldozers took out all the concrete in a mere six days.