Cedar Creek Fish Passage

Video Transcript

The following is a complete transcript of the video which appears on Big R Bridge's Fish Passage Products page:

Narrator:

The Smith River enters the ocean near the Oregon/California border, just north of the town of Crescent City. It drains approximately 700 square miles of some of the most remote and rugged coastal mountains in northern California and southern Oregon. The Mill Creek forest is famous for its large stand of old-growth Redwoods, home to some of the largest and oldest trees on Earth.

But in the neighboring watershed of Cedar Creek, beneath the same majestic Redwoods, a steep culvert has blocked a pristine Salmon and Trout stream since 1949. Cutthroat Trout wait in the outlet pool, beneath a curtain of bubbles, hoping for an opportunity to move upstream, but this culvert is impassable.

Even the agile Steelhead Trout can't make it through this pipe. In addition to the moderate leap, the water flowing through the steep culvert is going so fast that any fish that manages to make the leap is immediately washed back out again.

This culvert was a complete barrier for nearly 60 years.

Chinook and Coho Salmon can't make it through, either. But in 2007, the old culvert was removed and replaced with a 65-foot-long steel bridge, reopening over a mile of stream channel in an undisturbed, old-growth Redwood forest.

After nearly 3 years of site assessment, design and permitting, the project began on September 13th, 2007. With crews from the California Conservation Corps coming in to relocate native plants, ferns and small trees.

A few days later, biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game arrived to relocate salamanders and frogs, and any juvenile Salmon or Trout residing in the construction area.

All of the aquatic organisms were collected and then released off-site, where they would not be bothered by the construction process.

When the fish and game crews finished, all was clear for the heavy-equipment work to start. First they brought in nearly 90 tons of large rock to be used in the new roughened channel, and to protect the new bridge abutment.

On September 17th, the digging began.

First, the road-fill was excavated using a hydrolic excavator and dump-trucks, and a multi-terrain loader. When the culvert was finally exposed, it was pulled out with a cable and hauled away.

After the old culvert was removed, channel reconstruction began.

The design at this site called for a roughened-channel, which buries a series of rock ribs below the channel surface. This guarantees a channel gradient that will be passable by all aquatic species.

Reconstructing the channel and placing the Rip-Rap along the banks is a long, slow process. After nearly 3 weeks, the channel and bank protection work was complete and the footings were prepared for the new bridge.

The construction crane arrived on October 10th to install the pair of 65' steel spans onto concrete footings. This design option requires a hefty placement of large rock to protect the footings from being undermined by storm flows.

With the new bridge in place, railings were attached and asphalt surfacing was applied. Now both traffic passage and fish passage are restored.

Within a month, the rains came, bringing enough water into Cedar Creek to attrack Salmon and Steelhead (Trout) once again. As in prior years, Chinook Salmon swam up from the Smith River, but instead of finding a culvert blocking their way, they found gravels suitable for spawning. 5 fish were observed below the new bridge on December 5th, 2007.

A natural log-step was exposed up-stream of the culvert as a result of channel adjustments, but both Steelhead (Trout) and Chinook Salmon got over it during high flows and headed up-stream to spawn.

Snorkle surveys conducted during the summer-time documented the presence of many juvenile Trout, as well as one of the first Coho Salmon naturally reared in Cedar Creek in nearly 60 years.

Credits:

Video by Thomas B. Dunklin and Zack Larson

Edited and produced by Thomas B. Dunklin for the Smith River Alliance

Original Music by Tim Gray

Many thanks to all who worked on the Cedar Creek design and implementation:

Mitch Farro, PCFWWRA

Mike Love & Associates

Winzler & Kelly

Rocky Brown Construction

With much appreciation to:

California Department of Fish & Game

Bella Vista Foundation

Firedoll Foundation

California Conservation Corps

California Department of Parks & Recreation

Smith River Advisory Council

Heidi and Joe Gillespie

and to the many individuals who volunteered their time to make this project possible.