The Scott River Valley carries the scars of over a century of hydraulic and placer mining, which stripped riparian vegetation and left stream channels simplified and disconnected from their floodplains. Prolonged drought and disease outbreaks downstream in the Klamath River have compounded the damage, reducing streamflow, raising water temperatures, and driving high juvenile salmon mortality. In 2015, flooding destroyed the Farmers Ditch diversion, a critical piece of infrastructure just three miles downstream of Callahan that both delivers irrigation water to more than 1,000 acres of farmland and controls fish passage to Sugar Creek, leaving the river with dry sections that block migration and a community facing real water security concerns.

CalTrout is working with the Yurok Tribe, the Karuk Tribe, the Scott River Water Trust, and the Farmers Ditch Company to fix that infrastructure and rebuild the river around it. The project relocates and modernizes the Farmers Ditch diversion point to restore natural flow patterns, upgrades irrigation delivery systems and on-farm equipment for greater efficiency, and rebuilds in-stream habitat complexity by reconnecting floodplains and improving groundwater connectivity. Restoring year-round flow and access to Sugar Creek reopens critical habitat for coho salmon, a species listed as federally threatened, alongside Chinook salmon, steelhead, and Pacific Lamprey.

With funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Wildlife Conservation Board, the first phase of this work is targeted for completion in 2026. As CalTrout Regional Director Damon Goodman put it, the project is designed to be "a real win-win for fish, farms, and California's Tribal communities," proving that habitat restoration and reliable agricultural water use can work in tandem rather than in competition.