Where Have All the Fishes Gone?

Steelhead Trout

A visit to Healdsburg, California and its surrounding wine country is an opportunity to visit Warm

Dry Creek Valley is wine country

Springs Dam, Lake Sonoma, its recreation area and the Don Clausen Fish Hatchery.  It’s an opportunity to visit nature and experience a bit of Dry Creek Valley’s history.

The story told by the US Army Corps of Engineers on all the facility’s displays is relatively simple.  The dam, finished in 1983, was built to control the annual flooding of Dry Creek Valley which

Dry Creek, home to endangered Coho salmon,
threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead

displaced farmers, residents and businesses at great annual cost.  The dam eliminated the ability of Coho salmon and Steelhead trout to return home to spawn, so Congressman Don Clausen spearheaded the effort to build a state-of-the-art fish hatchery.

The recreation area resulting from the effort includes “wildlife areas”, water skiing, hiking/biking/equestrian trails, an archery range, picnic areas, camping, swimming, boating and a marina.  On its face, these are all great justifications for building the dam and funding the US Army Corps of Engineers’ management of the area.

There is more to the story.  The struggle and controversy over the dam is mostly suppressed by the beauty of the surrounding wineries, olive groves, magnificent vistas and quaint farm houses—and forgotten in the march of time and progress.

Another side to the story...

The ranger on duty explained the necessity of building the hatchery as a way of recovering the lost fish resource and then opined that the dam was probably not strictly an environmental solution. 

Male Coho Salmon

That is not to say that the hatchery is not a marvel of technology and science accomplishing its mission.  The hatchery is educational and inspiring beyond expectation and the dedication of the people working there is contagious.

Further inquiry, however, indicates there was great controversy back in the ‘70s and 80’s over the dam’s financing and environmental impacts.  A flood control request from only 25% of the valley’s property owners was sufficient to trigger tax assessments for all.  Water from Warm Springs Dam covers many prehistoric Pomo Indian sites of archeological value.  Some botanical materials like

Pomo Indian basket

sedge, willow, lobatium and angelica used by the Pomos to make some of the world’s finest indigenous basketry were replanted in unaffected areas, but many of the 65 prehistoric and 45 historical sites important to Pomo culture were covered with water.

The loss of natural fish habitat and spawning grounds along with everything else submerged under the dam’s 381,000 acre-feet of water was of little concern to the special interests intent upon developing the valley by providing more water to the region.

Old-timers in the area acknowledge that there was almost annual flooding, but they scoff at the damage control justification for building the dam.  The flooding was an expected seasonal, nutrient-rich blessing to farmers and no one of sound mind built significant permanent structures in flood-prone plains.  Even worse, the earth dam sits precariously between the Healdsburg and Porter Creek geological faults.

Birthing at a hatchery...

Mix it all up

Harvesting eggs from female
salmon

Collecting milt from male salmon

Time will tell whether the dam and its hatchery were a successful solution providing water, a fish recovery scheme and flood control in a sustainable manner.  The consequences of unsustainable development and mismanagement of our natural resources can deliver attractive valleys like Dry Creek and its superb wineries, but it results in loss of fish habitat.  It’s troubling, though, that the same pattern is repeated all across California, and the rest of the country for that matter.  Is it any wonder the salmon have dwindled off our coasts?