Field tour coordinator: Brian LeNeve, Carmel River Steelhead Association

 

Tour leaders: Haley Ohms, PhD, University of California Santa Cruz & NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Beverly Chaney, Associate Fisheries Biologist, Monterey Peninsula Water Management District Cal Am Dam Keeper

 

The Los Padres Dam tour will focus on how to improve fish passage over and back down from an existing dam, along with habitat improvements below an existing dam. With presenters from NMFS, Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, California American Water, and the Carmel River Steelhead Association participants will learn about 40 years of work to benefit steelhead.

This tour will drive south to the Carmel River and visit the Los Padres Dam site 24 miles from the ocean. When Los Padres Dam was built there was no fish passage considered and as a consequence many projects have been built to allow steelhead, and rainbow to migrate up to the headwaters and back down as adults.

To get fish over the dam three different ladder and trap structures have been built and are still visible including a wood ladder and trap, a metal and concrete ladder, and the Alaska Slide ladder and concrete block trap used today. Spring will be prime steelhead migration time so if we are lucky one or more fish will be in the trap so we can see them trucked over the dam.

To get fish downstream boulders were blown up to prevent fish from crashing into them from the spillway. A metal extension was added to the spillway to get fish past remaining boulders, a berm was installed on the spillway to channel water into a concentrated area, a “notch” was cut in the top of the spillway and a 4.8-million dollar water slide and behavioral guidance system was installed. There is also evidence of gravel injections done several years ago and more are planned in the future. 

Your guides from the Carmel River Steelhead Association and Cal-am Water Co. will explain how each of these systems are working or have worked, and a representative from the NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center will talk about what we have learned about fish passage through the dam as a result of a study started last year.