SUNOL — A threatened species could soon make a comeback in the Sunol Valley, if the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's hopes come true.
After years of planning, the agency has started releasing water from its Calaveras Dam and opened up a fish ladder that steelhead trout can use to spawn.
If it succeeds, it would mark an incredible comeback for the aquatic life of Alameda Creek, which has been impeded by many man-made barriers.
"The day when an adult steelhead comes back in the watershed and spawns, and we could witness that -- it's been 50 years since that's happened," said Randy Renn, who works for the city's utilities commission at the Sunol Valley Water Treatment Plant and hikes down to the creek every day to check for steelhead.
If there's a steelhead in a trap built on the creek, it will get tagged with a microchip. If the fish returns to spawn, the biologists will know.
The warming weather after a rainy winter make the biologists hopeful that they'll soon see the trout.
There have been other encouraging examples of wildlife returning to parts of the Bay Area. Chinook salmon were recently seen swimming in the streams of Silicon Valley. Tule elk, meanwhile, have begun inhabiting the hills around San Jose.
The SFPUC supplies water to 2.7 million people in the Bay Area, but their biologists work under the motto that fish are their customers too.
For decades, the SFPUC has been working to remove some dams, improve others, and add a ladder to make its Alameda Creek watershed more hospitable to steelhead. Tim Ramirez manages natural resources for the agency. He has seen rainbow trout make the creek their home for many years, and now hopes as many steelhead as possible will spawn here.
"Is there an end point? I think that's not super clear at the moment. But I think we're all excited to know that the fish have been here without us doing very much at all to help," said Ramierez. "And now we're doing a whole bunch of things to help. Ideally, it's going to get better for them, other folks in the watershed will do their part, and then collectively, we'll see that trend go up."
