Ground broken on Upper York Creek dam removal

St. Helena Star

Elected officials, federal agencies and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday broke ground on a $7.5 million project designed to take a step back in time.

The Upper York Creek Ecosystem Restoration Project on Spring Mountain aims to restore steelhead trout where they were once plentiful by removing most of the Upper York Creek Dam and 95 percent of the sediment that has built up behind the dam for more than a century. Construction of the dam, an earthen structure, was completed in 1900.

Described as a model project because of its inter-agency synergy, the Upper York Creek dam removal is one of more than two dozen such projects around the nation at present, according to John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant secretary of the Army (Civil Works). But it is one of only a small number of projects involving the diversion of streams or rivers for ecological purposes in which the Army Corps of Engineers is participating.

“What will eventually happen is that the fish will be able to migrate their way further up the river,” said Corps of Engineers Brigadier General John McMahon. “Ten years ago there were more fish, but more and more have been killed by the inadvertent release of silt that had built up behind the dam.”

Steelhead trout have become an endangered or threatened species.

Removing the sediment is expected to ensure there will be no additional sediment released that can kill fish. It should also provide a hospitable venue for salmon spawning.

“The next phase is to get the dam out of the creek and let the creek do what it wants to do,” said St. Helena Director of Public Works Jonathon Goldman. “After this project is complete, we'll have opened up four or five miles of steelhead habitat without any manmade obstacles.”

Woodley said that nationwide there are many obsolete dams that are harmful to marine life such as the one at Upper York Creek and that there is currently a move to “get rid of them and restore the natural hydrology.”

Some of the dams scheduled for removal in New England date back to Colonial times, added Mark Charlton, another U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official..

“… and some go back to the early days of electric power â€" one, two or three kilowatts â€" hardly enough to light a light bulb today,” he added.

“Biologists didn't realize the impact they had on fish,” said Charlton. “It was not something they were focused on. As a result, we are left with a legacy that's pretty expensive.”

In addition to the Army and the City of St. Helena, other participants in the Upper York Creek project are U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, District 1 Congressman Mike Thompson and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Thompson remembered spending the money he earned as a newspaper carrier during his youth in St. Helena buying lures to catch the steelheads in Upper York Creek.

“Hopefully we'll be able to return to those fishing days in the near future,” he said.