Friday, November 6
Alameda Creek Watershed Restoration Tour
Tour Coordinators: Jeff Miller, Alameda Creek Alliance; Scott Chenue and Randall Renn, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission; Claire Buchanan, California Trout; Kelsi Oshiro and Andre Dextre, Alameda County Water District; and Ed Culver, East Bay Regional Park District
Join Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup partners for an all-day tour of the Alameda Creek watershed, focused on key fish passage project locations. We’ll start at the new fish ladders in the lower Alameda Creek flood control channel in Fremont and make our way up through Niles Canyon. We’ll visit the tributary Stonybrook Creek, then proceed upstream to visit the site of the latest fish passage project at a PG&E pipeline crossing in the Sunol Valley. Lunch at the Sunol Water Temple, adjacent to the new Alameda Creek Watershed Center. In the afternoon we will explore upper Alameda Creek in Sunol regional Wilderness, below Calaveras Dam and at the scenic gorge at the Alameda Creek Overlook. Our final visit will be to the fish ladder at the Alameda Diversion Dam, 28 miles upstream from San Francisco Bay.
San Francisquito Creek Watershed
Tour Coordinators: Patrick Samuel and Charlie Schneider, California Trout; Alan Launer and Karla Smith, Stanford University
Tour of Lower San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto to visit fish passage and flood control project sites in the lower creek watershed. We will visit the confluence of Bear Creek, the undammed northern tributary, with Corte Madera Creek below Searsville Dam. Stanford University will give a briefing on their watershed restoration plan, followed by a visit to Searsville Dam and Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
South Bay Creeks
Tour Coordinator: Clayton Leal, Santa Clara Valley Water District
Stream tributaries in Santa Clara County that drain to San Francisco Bay provide habitat for Central California Coast Steelhead, and Coyote Creek is by far the largest of these tributaries. Decades of development and encroachment have contributed to passage impediments and degraded habitat for anadromous fish throughout the system. Valley Water has worked, and continues to work, to restore fish passage and improve habitat conditions on Coyote Creek. This field tour will visit a past project, a current project, and a project planned for the future.
This field tour will explore the engineering and ecological principles behind these restoration efforts. Time permitting, the tour will also include a visit to Valley Water fish monitoring sites featuring a Vaki Riverwatcher, PIT antenna arrays and other restoration sites in adjacent watersheds.
Saturday, November 7
Alameda Creek Watershed Restoration Tour
Tour Coordinators: Jeff Miller, Alameda Creek Alliance; Claire Buchanan, California Trout; and Ed Culver, East Bay Regional Park District
Join Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup partners for a half-day tour of the Alameda Creek watershed, focused on key fish passage project locations. We’ll start at the new fish ladders in the lower Alameda Creek flood control channel in Fremont and make our way up through Niles Canyon. We’ll visit the tributary Stonybrook Creek, then proceed upstream to the Sunol Valley. We’ll reach upper Alameda Creek in Sunol Regional Wilderness, below Calaveras Dam and at the scenic gorge at the Alameda Creek Overlook.
Pinole Creek Tour
Tour Coordinator: Bert Mulchaey, East Bay Municipal Utility District
Tour the Pinole Creek I-80 Fish Passage Project, Alhambra Valley Bridge, and Tomato Stand Fish Passage Project. The tour will start at the 1-80 Fish Passage Project and move upstream to discuss the project that Contra Costa County completed to replace the culvert under Alhambra Valley Road with a bridge. The tour's final stop will be the Tomato Stand Fish Passage Project site. The tour will discuss current and historic steelhead presence and monitoring efforts as well as permitting, funding and construction hurdles for these projects that now provide steelhead unfettered access to EBMUD's Pinole Valley Watershed.
Lagunitas Creek Salmon Habitat Enhancement - Restoring Wood and Gravel to a Dammed Coastal Stream
Field Tour Coordinators: Jonathan Koehler, Marin Water; and Sarah Phillips, Marin Resource Conservation District
Lagunitas Creek in Marin County California is a high priority watershed for recovery of endangered Coho Salmon and threatened steelhead within the Central California Coast evolutionarily significant unit. In 2024, Marin Municipal Water District (Marin Water) began implementing a large-scale multi-phase habitat enhancement project to address historical and current habitat deficits caused by watershed development and dams. The project is a collaboration between California State Parks (landowner), state and federal granting agencies, and local stakeholder groups. In total, thirteen sites along approximately four miles of Lagunitas Creek have been identified for habitat enhancement. The project design engineers, Environmental Science Associates, developed the restoration approach with the objective of converting existing glide habitats (relatively shallow and slow) to closely spaced pool-riffle sequences through the addition of large wood habitat structures and thousands of tons of gravel. The goal is to create new salmonid spawning and rearing opportunities in close proximity, restore natural levels of wood loading, and explore the effects of gravel augmentation. Eight of the thirteen sites will be completed by October 2026.
This tour will highlight the three completed phases of this project and highlight lessons learned from each. Tour leaders will also share preliminary results of effectiveness monitoring and Marin Water’s overall salmonid monitoring program.