Gavin Newsom announces $60 million plan to build channel, reintroduce salmon on Yuba River

Gov. Gavin Newsom joined state and federal officials at Daguerre Point Dam in Marysville Tuesday to tout a long-sought deal to reintroduce Chinook salmon to the northern fork of the Yuba River for the first time in nearly 100 years.

As part of the agreement, state and federal officials will build a fishway — a channel for migrating fish — around the century-old dam to open up 12 miles of habitat for salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and lamprey. The announcement was met with both optimism and frustration from environmentalists who have long advocated for the dam’s removal.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to implement a truly significant comprehensive environmental stewardship project — and these benefits will be realized for decades,” said Willie Whittlesey, general manager of the Yuba Water Agency.

The $60 million project, approved by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Yuba Water Agency, is designed to decrease the risk of extinction for threatened species.

“Despite a more modest deficit, we’re holding the line on projects like these and we’re moving them forward,” Newsom said in front of the dam on Tuesday.

A California Dam blocks salmon, steelhead passage

Daguerre Point Dam was constructed in 1906 to hold back hydraulic mining debris in the Sacramento river system caused by damage from the Gold Rush. The dam, now owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has become a point of contention because it blocks fish migration.

The Army Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the last two decades have recommended the dam’s removal. Instead, this plan will construct a passage for adult fish to swim around the dam and truck juvenile fish past it.

After spending years debating how best to promote the recovery of Chinook salmon, steelhead and sturgeon, environmental groups expressed frustration Tuesday, saying they had been excluded from the discussions that led to the deal.

Aaron Zettler-Mann, executive director of the South Yuba River Citizens League, called the plan to truck juvenile fish around the river’s upper dam ‘trap and haul.’ But he expressed optimism about the fishway effort that his organization has worked on for years.

“I think there’s a lot of potential good to happen from this agreement, certainly,” he said. “We are optimistic but skeptical about the reintroduction above New Bullards.” The Chinook salmon will be released into the river north of the New Bullards Bar Dam and Reservoir.

Another deal between local water agencies and the state and federal government is coming together in the background. It involves whether to renew a program that pulls water from the Yuba River through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and into the state and federal water projects.

Zettler-Mann said he is “disappointed and nervous that there is a backroom negotiation that probably includes expiration of a water transfer program,” adding that an environmental review is needed ahead of renewal.

Meghan Quinn, associate director at the national nonprofit American Rivers, said dam removal should have been a higher priority. This project is a stopgap in lieu of that outcome, she said, which would limit water for state and federal projects but is crucial to long-term environmental protection.

“They needed to do something to mitigate for that damage that they are causing in the watershed,” she said. “Rather than work on a solution... they chose to move forward with a project that I don’t think anyone supports in the NGO community.”

Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said that the fishway represents a “pragmatic” and “low-cost” alternative that could be executed in a few years.

“We can either keep these fights alive, which California is infamous for on water, or we can sit down and actually do something,” he said. “I’m in the camp of doing something because I’m getting too old to do otherwise.”

A long history of Chinook Salmon on the Yuba River

Chinook salmon are an iconic California fish that play a critical role in regional ecosystems and support a commercial fishing industry. They make long migrations from high-altitude rivers out to the Pacific Ocean and then back again to spawn years later.

The Central Valley’s river system was once a Chinook stronghold, where between 1 and 2 million fish spawned in the tributaries of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers each year before the Gold Rush. The fish were vital to the culture and traditional foods of Native Americans, and remain so today.

But over the last decade, degradation and habitat loss led to a steep population decline for both salmon and steelhead runs. Between the impact of dams, severe drought and warm rivers, environmentalists are now seeking to list spring and fall run Chinook as threatened or endangered.

“For both the sort of the historic legacy of development and climate change, our salmon need help,” said Wade Crowfoot, head of the California Natural Resources Agency. “We need to implement an all-of-the-above strategy to help our salmon recover and help our aquatic ecosystems recover and thrive. That’s what we’re doing.”