Trabuco Creek Fish Passage Project

Trabuco Creek Fish Passage Project

Home | Key Initiatives | Reconnect Habitat | Trabuco Creek Fish Passage Project

Project Goal:

Enable steelhead passage through two total barriers, the Metrolink railroad crossing and the I-5 bridge array, on Trabuco Creek, and provide access to 15 miles of upstream high-quality spawning and rearing habitat. Trabuco Creek, as part of the San Juan Creek watershed, is a high priority steelhead recovery river identified in the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS, 2012) Southern California Steelhead Recovery Plan.


Learn More

Project Stages

35% Planning and Design

65% Planning and Design

100% Planning, Design, and Permitting

Implementation

Estimated Completion Date:
2029

Region:

Project Funders

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

CA Wildlife Conservation Board

Orange County Community Foundation – Warne Family Fund for Endangered Species.

Whittier Trust – Gray Family Donor-Advised Fund

Fish Affected:

Threats:

Project Description

Trabuco Creek offers a critical and timely opportunity to re-establish a steelhead population in coastal Southern California where Southern steelhead are on the brink of extinction. Trabuco Creek is the major tributary to San Juan Creek, a 134 square mile watershed with large tracts of undeveloped land in Orange County, California and high-quality trout habitat in the upper reaches of the Santa Ana mountains. However, passage to this habitat is blocked by two total fish passage barriers at the Metrolink railroad bridge and the Interstate 5 bridge array in the lower watershed, five miles in from the ocean. Remediation of these last two barriers will be achieved through construction of 600 ft. hydraulically designed nature-like fishways to enable aquatic organism passage through these weirs that block migration to historic spawning and rearing habitat.

Poised for construction, this remarkable engineering effort - in final design and permitting phase - is integrated into the landscape as a multi-benefit community and transportation improvement project. This project has the greatest potential in the region to promote recovery of the federally and state CESA-listed endangered Southern California steelhead. This project will permanently restore historic access to 15 miles of upstream habitat and restore anadromy to the headwaters of the Santa Ana Mountains 20 miles inland.

The project leverages coast-to-headwaters fish passage restoration projects in the watershed in which >80 check dams in the upper San Juan Creek watershed were removed by the US Forest Service to improve native fish migration. Identified as a restoration priority decades ago, this project implements the vision of a watershed-level restoration effort that connects floodplains, migratory pathways and diverse ecosystems. While the project exemplifies the challenge of fish passage restoration in an urban environment, it more importantly demonstrates that species extinction is not an inevitable consequence of human development; and that projects that help restore fisheries also restore watersheds for the community.

Click HERE to view a Request for Proposals for a Construction Manager role for the project.

Project Partners:

A large team of South Coast Steelhead Coalition partners are working to bring this project into construction phase by 2026: Trout Unlimited, other environmental NGOs, the Orange County Flood Control District, federal and state resource agencies, local government, the local Tribal community, CalTrans, an expert engineering team, and members of the local community contribute greatly to the recovery of endangered Southern California steelhead.

More Initiative Projects