Tuesday April 16, 2024
Daily Republic —
The Solano County Water Agency board this week accepted an $825,000 planning grant from the state Department of Fish & Wildlife to help salmon better navigate around, or over, the Los Rios Check Dam.
“There’s been a version of the (check dam) going back before the 1960s,” Max Stevenson, the Putah Creek streamkeeper, said in a phone interview Friday, the morning after the board’s action. “The problem is it blocks fish passage.”
The dam boards can keep adult fish from coming up into the creek to spawn, and keep juvenile fish from reaching the toe drain, which flows into the waters of the Cache Creek complex, into the Delta and eventually out to sea.
The vision is for those fish to return to the creek with each new generation, creating a specific Putah Creek race of salmon.
“There have been a number of ideas about what to do about that,” Stevenson added. “Usually, you just remove the boards when they are not needed.”