Harvey Diversion Fish Passage Project, Santa Paula Creek

On Santa Paula Creek, a tributary of the Santa Clara River about 19 miles inland from the Ventura County coast, the Harvey Diversion has stood as a complete barrier to fish passage, cutting off endangered Southern Steelhead from as much as 18.5 miles of historically accessible upstream habitat. The Santa Clara River watershed is designated a Core 1 priority area for Southern Steelhead recovery, making this one of the most consequential barriers left standing in the watershed for a species that has declined more than 95 percent from its historic numbers.

CalTrout has worked on this problem in stages: an earlier interim project, funded by the Coastal Conservancy, the Santa Clara River Trustee Council, and CDFW's Office of Spill Prevention and Response stabilized about 900 feet of streambed and installed in-stream structures to restore a passable stream gradient, reconnecting an estimated 10.3 miles of river above the dam. That interim fix bought time, but a permanent solution required removing the barrier entirely. In 2019, CalTrout secured funding from California Department of Fish and Wildlife Proposition 1 and Proposition 68 bond funding to finalize the design and permitting for full barrier remediation, working alongside the Santa Clara River Steelhead Coalition, Stillwater Sciences, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the Santa Clara River Trustee Council. Design and permitting reached full completion, with construction anticipated soon to finally remediate this federally and state-identified barrier for good. For a species now reduced to a fraction of its historic range in Southern California, reopening Santa Paula Creek represents a meaningful expansion of the limited habitat Southern Steelhead have left to recover in.