Alameda Creek runs more than 40 miles from Packard Ridge to San Francisco Bay, but for decades a series of barriers kept salmon and steelhead from ever reaching most of it. The Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup formed in 1999, has been dedicated to restoring fish passage, removing the Sunol and Niles dams in 2006 and installing a fish ladder at the Alameda Creek Diversion Dam in 2018. That work brought the total number of fish passage barriers remediated across the watershed to 17, but one obstacle remained: a concrete layer protecting a PG&E gas pipeline crossing in Sunol Valley that blocked migration during most stream flows, regardless of species or water year.

CalTrout partnered with PG&E, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Alameda Creek Alliance, NOAA Fisheries, and a team of ecological consultants to solve it differently: rather than building another structure to protect the pipeline in place, the project relocated the pipeline about 100 feet downstream and buried it roughly 18 feet beneath the creek bed, eliminating the need for a barrier altogether. Construction began in summer 2025 and wrapped up that fall, with funding shared by PG&E, a NOAA Fish Passage Grant, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The result is exactly what a quarter-century of restoration work was building toward: Chinook salmon, Central California Coast Steelhead, and native lamprey now have consistent access to more than 20 miles of high-quality habitat in and above Sunol Regional Park, habitat that's been effectively out of reach for over 70 years.