Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Thanks to a novel injection of cold, clear water from Camp Meeker’s water system, about 3,400 imperiled coho salmon and steelhead trout have a better chance of surviving in Dutch Bill Creek until rain sweeps them to safety in the Russian River.
Gurgling as it splashed down a narrow, rock-lined channel under towering redwoods, the gift of water to a shrinking creek was hailed last week by a group of officials from state and local agencies committed to saving the fish from the grip of California’s historic drought.
“This is incredibly exciting for me,” said David Hines of the National Marine Fisheries Service, calling the flow “literally a lifesaver” for the juvenile coho and steelhead trapped in pools along the creek that winds along Bohemian Highway to a confluence with the river at Monte Rio.
The water, delivered nonstop from a nearby Camp Meeker Recreation and Park District storage tank at 44 gallons a minute, amounts to just one-tenth of a cubic foot per second — minuscule compared with the current release of 110 cfs from Lake Sonoma’s Warm Springs Dam into the river near Healdsburg.
But it has more than doubled the volume of water in the creek, one of four primary coho-rearing waterways in Sonoma County, affording the fish a “minimum subsistence” flow for the rest of the summer, Hines said.
Read more at: Water added to Camp Meeker’s Dutch Bill Creek | The Press Democrat