Steelhead are typically associated with big, wild rivers on the North Coast, but a few remnant populations still cling to footholds in urban areas, which is why it’s so heartbreaking to read about a burst water pipe which poured drinking water into San Mateo Creek at the rate of 1,000 gallons per hour — killing all the fish in the creek, including protected steelhead trout.
Drinking water leading to a fishkill? Sadly, yes. Drinking water is often treated with chlorine or chloramine (a combination of ammonia and chlorine), and is highly toxic to fish (via the SF Chronicle):
The dead fish began floating to the surface Saturday when a thousand gallons a minute of chlorinated water flowed down a forested hillside into the creek about a half-mile below Crystal Springs Reservoir, according to utility officials and residents.
Utility officials located the break in a 60-inch-diameter pipe next to a concrete bridge adjacent to Crystal Springs Road, near the border of Hillsborough and San Mateo. It took them eight hours to cut off the flow along a 4-mile section of pipeline, but water was still leaking out Monday at a rate of 200 gallons a minute, officials said.
“It’s bad,” said Stephen Rogers [ED: Stephen Rogers serves on CalTrout’s Board of Directors], a local resident who stood along the shaded banks looking at the streambed. “The fish here are an indicator species – like the canary in the coal mine. As long as the canary’s alive, things are fine, but when something like this happens, things are not fine.”
The Bay Area is riddled with streams that still support steelhead trout, though a number of previous spills prove suggest those fish are vulnerable.
Caltrout has been in contact with both NMFS and DFW, and Executive Director Jeff Thompson said “Our goal at this time is to understand the full extent of incident. Have we lost everything in the stream — fish and macroinvertebrates?”
“We’re looking to partner with the agencies to recover the stream and its threatened fish populations. We want to do what’s necessary to ensure incidents like this don’t happen again.”
Healthy, diverse fish populations can weather fish kills, but when species become isolated, a single event can have a catastrophic impact on distinct populations.
The San Francisco Bay Area isn’t the only example of an isolated population in California; Southern California steelhead trout (a distinct group which can survive higher water temperatures), McCloud Redband trout (which exist only in a few small streams on the flank of Mt. Shasta), Lahontan Cutthroats and many others still exist, but in small, isolated populations that could wink out in a second.
Once that occurs, they’re lost forever.
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Peter Moyle is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology and Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, at UC Davis. He is author or co-author of more than 240 publications, including the definitive Inland Fishes of California (2002). He is co-author of the 2017 book, Floodplains: Processes and Management for Ecosystem Services. His research interests include conservation of aquatic species, habitats, and ecosystems, including salmon; ecology of fishes of the San Francisco Estuary; ecology of California stream fishes; impact of introduced aquatic organisms; and use of floodplains by fish.
Robert Lusardi is the California Trout/UC Davis Wild and Coldwater Fish Researcher focused on establishing the basis for long-term science specific to California Trout’s wild and coldwater fish initiatives. His work bridges the widening gap between academic science and applied conservation policy, ensuring that rapidly developing science informs conservation projects throughout California. Dr. Lusardi resides at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and works closely with Dr. Peter Moyle on numerous projects to help inform California Trout conservation policy. His recent research interests include Coho salmon on the Shasta River, the ecology of volcanic spring-fed rivers, inland trout conservation and management, and policy implications of trap and haul programs for anadromous fishes in California.
Patrick Samuel is the Conservation Program Coordinator for California Trout, a position he has held for almost two years, where he coordinates special research projects for California Trout, including the State of the Salmonids report. Prior to joining CalTrout, he worked with the Fisheries Leadership & Sustainability Forum, a non-profit that supports the eight federal regional fishery management councils around the country. Patrick got his start in fisheries as an undergraduate intern with NOAA Fisheries Protected Resources Division in Sacramento, and in his first field job as a crew member of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Wild and Heritage Trout Program.