Dave Morse, a heavy equipment operator with Dietrich Construction, uses an excavator to place large boulders in Williams Creek to restore habitat and form channels Wednesday following the removal of the Lower Bridgeport Dam.
By Jeff Duewel of the Daily Courier
PROVOLT — An excavator picked up massive boulders Wednesday morning and arranged them in rows in the bed of Williams Creek, altering the stream after removal of Lower Bridgeport Dam.
It’s a project to help irrigators and multiple fish species on this important salmon- and steelhead-bearing tributary, less than a mile upstream of the confluence with the Applegate River.
When finished, 31 miles of stream habitat will be more accessible to fish.
The project is part of an ongoing effort around the state to remove fish barriers — there are 74 in the Rogue Basin on the state’s priority list for removal. Most are far smaller than the high-profile removals of Savage Rapids Dam in 2009 and Gold Ray Dam a year later on the Rogue. And Lower Bridgeport is already off the list.
“It’s satisfying that we’ve actually removed quite a few of them in our area,” said longtime Rogue fisheries advocate Dave Strahan of Grants Pass, who wrote letters seeking funding for the Lower Bridgeport project. “It’s encouraging and refreshing to see we’re making some progress.”
Since 2005, 22 dams have been removed in the Rogue Basin, and passage has been improved in at least 14 more locations, said Dan Van Dyke, district fisheries biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Central Point.
“Restoring passage at smaller dams and other barriers on tributaries is a natural complement to big dam removal projects,” Van Dyke said in an email.
Lower Bridgeport, which was removed earlier in the project this month, was a simple pushup dam, constructed by a backhoe each year, so the irrigation water diverted from the Applegate upstream could continue across lower Williams Creek into farmland.
It wasn’t a complete blockage of the creek, but it kept juveniles from moving easily up and downstream, and in low-water years hampered fall chinook salmon spawning.
“There’s a lot of issues when there’s less water in the fall,” said Julie Cymore, fish passage program manager for the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council, which worked with irrigators and agencies to see the project through.
Now the irrigation water goes through a 300-foot-long pipe under the creek, and the entire site is being reshaped with the boulders and large trees to create a gradual drop instead of a 4-foot one.
The stream is currently rerouted by a coffer dam, keeping it out of the work zone.
Before the heavy work began, 250 trout or steelhead fry, one coho salmon fry, one chinook fry, 600 sculpin, and 500 juvenile Pacific lamprey were relocated from the construction area to a site upstream.
A new headgate structure with fish screens is already in place. The other benefit is no mixing of irrigation water and Williams Creek, which should cool water in the creek.
“Before, you had five miles of irrigation water getting warm and full of nutrients, commingling with Williams Creek,” said Janelle Dunlevy, executive director of the Applegate Watershed Council.
Blue Fox Farm and Whistling Duck Farm both grow vegetables irrigated by the ditch, and Blue Fox owner Chris Jagger said his water should be more reliable now, with 3,000 feet of ditch to be lined with pipe to stop seepage.
“I’m excited just knowing that the water course is going to be more secure after this is done,” Jagger said.
Van Dyke said the Rogue Basin has been impacted by fish passage barriers far more than other coastal watersheds in Oregon, for two big reasons:
- Hot and dry summers resulting in more dams and canals for irrigation;
- A higher human population in the watershed than in many coastal drainages.
Van Dyke said ODFW biologist Cole Rivers wrote that dam building began in the basin in the 1860s, and by 1941 several hundred were present.
On the 2019 priority list for obstructions in the Rogue Basin, No. 1 was Pomeroy Dam on the Illinois River in Cave Junction, which doesn’t block adult or juveniles completely but hinders them. The same goes for Murphy Dam on the Applegate in Murphy, No. 2 on the list. Both are irrigation dams.
River Design Group of Corvallis, headed by Grants Pass High School graduate Scott Wright, is the lead engineer at Lower Bridgeport. Wright’s also overseen work at Gold Ray, Gold Hill and Wimer Dam removals.
The project, located on the former Provolt Seed Orchard property owned by the BLM, should be finished in a few weeks, at a $520,000 cost paid by government grants.
NOAA fisheries, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, ODFW, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and the Paul Allen Foundation are contributors.
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Reach reporter Jeff Duewel at 541-474-3720 or jduewel@thedailycourier.com.