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Ungrateful Creek

Volunteers and workers rolled up their sleeves and climbed into Wildcat Creek on January 8 to help the steelhead trout living in the creek's lower reaches in Richmond move upstream. In an unusual coalition, the East Bay Conservation Corps (who volunteered their time), the East Bay Regional Parks District, the non-profit Waterways Restoration Institute, the Contra Costa County Flood Control District and the county fire department began removing debris and 200 huge grates covering a fish ladder that spans an 800 foot-long section of the creek.

The grates had become clogged with debris, filling the ladder with sediment and preventing the steelhead (listed last fall as a threatened species) from swimming upstream to potential spawning sites within Wildcat Canyon and Tilden Park. According to the Park District's Pete Alexander, similar, uncovered fish ladders on Alameda County creeks are successfully navigated by fish.

The Wildcat fish ladder is part of a flood control channel built by the Army Corps in the late 1980s under a "consensus plan" for a stretch of Wildcat Creek that flooded North Richmond every winter. The plan, which incorporated designs from the community and used local creek restoration groups for non-structural flood control, has since become a national model and was the start of a "new design philosophy" on the part of the Army Corps and the local flood control district toward flood control projects, says the Waterways Restoration Institute's Ann Riley. The Corps is better known for bulldozing banks and channelizing creeks.

Under a Section 1135 planning grant that enables the Corps to perform environmental restoration on flood control and navigation projects,the Corps will work with the citizen/government team to improve the creek's bankfull channel, floodplain and accessibility for fish, all of which exemplify the Corps' shift in attitude, according to Riley. "They're now considering ecosystem values too."

Contact: Ann Riley (510)848-2211

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