Securing South Bay Stream Flows for Bay Area Steelhead

The fight to restore steelhead access to South Bay streams goes back further than most people realize: in 1996, the Guadalupe-Coyote Resource Conservation District filed a complaint over how Santa Clara Valley Water District's reservoir operations were starving Stevens Creek, Coyote Creek, and the Guadalupe River of the flows steelhead need to survive. That complaint led to a 2003 settlement establishing the Fish and Aquatic Habitat Collaborative Effort, or FAHCE — a program built around modifying operations at six South Bay reservoirs (Stevens Creek, Guadalupe, Almaden, Calero, Vasona, and Lexington) to release enough water for fish passage during the critical periods steelhead depend on.

Getting from a settlement on paper to water actually reaching the creeks has proven to be a long process: it took until 2023 for the program's Environmental Impact Report to be certified, and the effort now centers on a water rights change petition before the State Water Board to lock measurable fish protection goals into South Bay water operations for good. CalTrout has stayed engaged throughout, working alongside the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Water & Power Law Group, the Northern California Council of Fly Fishers International, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, CDFW, NOAA Fisheries, and the State Water Board — entirely funded, notably, by private donations rather than public dollars.

The work is already showing results: FAHCE has removed more than 20 fish passage barriers, including 10 of the 18 priority barriers identified in the original settlement, eliminated in-stream gravel spreader dams on two creeks, and modified 2,100 feet of stream channel along Stevens Creek. For the millions of people living across Santa Clara County, this project represents something increasingly rare in a heavily urbanized watershed: proof that a fast-growing region's water supply and its native fish can be managed to serve both at once, rather than sacrificing one for the other.