Parks Creek Cardoza Ranch Fish Passage & Flow Enhancement Project

Parks Creek flows into the Shasta River in the heart of the Klamath Basin, but for nearly a hundred years, an outdated water diversion dam on Cardoza Ranch blocked fish from reaching much of the creek's upper reaches, while the diversion itself pulled water directly from a critical stretch of stream during the driest months of the year. CalTrout partnered with Cardoza Ranch, Emmerson Investments, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Conservation Board, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, UC Davis, and a team of engineering and construction firms to solve both problems together. The century-old diversion dam came out entirely, replaced with an aluminum span culvert that restores fish passage while still giving the ranch the agricultural access it needs. Just as importantly, the water diversion point itself was relocated 2.8 miles downstream, taking irrigation withdrawals out of the most sensitive upper reach of the creek and adding a minimum of 2.98 cubic feet per second of water back into the stream where fish need it most. The 2021 construction phase installed more than 16,000 linear feet of conveyance pipeline, an on-channel fish screen, a 40-horsepower pump, and 180 solar modules generating 70.3 kilowatts, powering the new water delivery system with renewable energy instead of drawing more from the grid or the stream.

Altogether, the project reopened more than 16 miles of spawning and rearing habitat that had been blocked or degraded for generations, a substantial addition to available habitat in a Shasta River watershed where cold, reliable flows are increasingly scarce.