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Water

How the SFPUC Contributes to Making Alameda Creek a Haven for Fish

As part of the Alameda Creek Watershed Fish Trapping & Tracking Program, SFPUC biologist Claire Hyde records information about steelhead before releasing them back into Alameda Creek.
As part of the Alameda Creek Watershed Fish Trapping & Tracking Program, SFPUC biologist Claire Hyde records information about steelhead before releasing them back into Alameda Creek.
  • Jonathan P Streeter

The Alameda Creek watershed, which stretches from its mouth in the San Francisco Bay near Fremont all the way to Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara County, provides important habitat for native fish and wildlife. The Calaveras and San Antonio Reservoirs are important sources of drinking water for San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) customers, and the creeks upstream and downstream are important aquatic habitat for native species. Due to many factors — including the construction of flood control facilities, water diversion structures, and urbanization of open spaces — once-abundant steelhead trout lost access to the watershed and have struggled to survive in just a few areas over the past 70 years.

In the late 1990s with the federal listing of steelhead under the endangered species act, things began to change. The Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup, including the SFPUC, started to identify barriers to fish migration and making plans to remove them or construct fish ladders over them.

A juvenile steelhead.

In 2006, the SFPUC removed Sunol and Niles Dams from Alameda Creek. The Alameda Creek Diversion Dam was rebuilt as part of the Calaveras Dam Replacement Project, including construction of a fish ladder in 2018. In January 2019 the SFPUC started releasing water from Calaveras Dam to support steelhead and other native species based on a schedule developed collaboratively with the Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Alameda Creek Alliance.

Steelhead Trout Make a Comeback

Now, due to decades of work by the SFPUC and other organizations to improve fish habitat and remove barriers, there has been an increase in juvenile steelhead leaving the watershed for San Francisco Bay and the ocean. During the SFPUC's annual fish trapping surveys between 2015 and 2023, biologists captured and released an average of about 40 steelhead a year. In 2024, they captured and released 2,600 steelhead. For the first time in more than 70 years, the SFPUC is also seeing adult steelhead enter the watershed, and in the last few weeks Chinook salmon were documented in the upper reaches of Alameda Creek.

Consistent with the SFPUC's Water Enterprise Environmental Stewardship Policy, the releases from Calaveras Dam mimic natural seasonal flows in the watershed. The SFPUC's mission to provide safe, clean and reliable drinking water to 2.7 million people in the Bay Area also includes a commitment to sustaining the natural resources entrusted to our care. The return on the SFPUC's investment in the collaborative restoration effort of migratory fish to Alameda Creek is starting to pay off.