By Neil Brandt | Development Director
In late October 2021, work crews finished demolition on three obsolete concrete dams as part of a WaterWatch-led collaborative project to restore access to habitat for native salmon and steelhead in Slate Creek, a key spawning tributary of the Rogue Basin’s Applegate River. Harboldt Dam, listed on the 2019 Statewide Fish Passage Barrier Priority List by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, came out, along with two other fish-blocking dams on Slate tributary Welter Creek.
The multi-faceted project significantly improved access to approximately 15 miles of spawning and rearing habitat, replaced the dams’ water diversion function with a fish-friendly, solar powered, screened, and metered pump, replaced 1,000 feet of leaky concrete canal with new pipe, removed a relic road abutment from Slate Creek, and decommissioned a section of logging road along Welter Creek.
Slate and Welter creeks are now entirely free-flowing at the former dam sites for the first time in at least 80 years. To pay for this project’s significant engineering, permitting, contracting, and construction costs, WaterWatch and our partners raised nearly $600,000 in public and private funding in just over 2 years. The project represented the highest priority fish barrier addressed in the Rogue since the WaterWatch-led Gold Hill Irrigation District Diversion Dam Improvement Project in 2016.
WaterWatch members, your support makes these achievements possible! Thanks to you, the ongoing Free the Rogue campaign remains one of the most successful dam removal and river restoration efforts in the nation. Even so, many obsolete dams throughout Oregon continue to harm fish, wildlife, and water quality even as the many stresses of climate change mount. Please consider a donation today to help us advance our next dam removal project and help restore salmon habitat and natural resiliency in the incredible Rogue River!
For more informationon WaterWatch’s current and past achievements protecting and restoring the Rogue, please check out our latest press release and our Free the Rogue campaign page on our website.
We are also moving forward on another high priority dam removal project in 2022. Please stay tuned for more updates on WaterWatch's dam removals this year!
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