A steelhead leaps up a barrier on its way to spawning grounds. Credit: Adobe Stock
Last year, California Trout and Pacific Gas & Electric removed the final barrier to fish passage on California’s Alameda Creek with funding from NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation. For the first time in 50 years, threatened Central California Coast steelhead and other migratory fish can reach spawning grounds and juvenile rearing habitat in the upper watershed.
Construction crews relocated a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) natural gas pipeline and removed its concrete covering. The pipeline had spanned the creek and created an 8-foot drop in the creek. They installed the new pipeline section deep below the creek bed, removed the old pipe section, and regraded the stream channel—restoring a natural pathway for fish.
Alameda Creek was once the largest producer of steelhead and Chinook salmon in San Francisco Bay. It may once again become a stronghold for migratory fish.
This project is the culmination of nearly three decades of advocacy, science, and collaboration. Working together, partners opened fish passage at 18 barriers along the creek that had blocked fish for generations.
“This project shows what’s possible when partners come together to solve complex challenges,” said NOAA Marine Habitat Resource Specialist Jonas Veazey. “Now that the final barrier on the mainstem has been removed, steelhead will be able to migrate freely and natural stream processes will be restored to the reach of the former barrier.”
In 1997, environmentalist Jeff Miller, who grew up in the East Bay, set out to see whether steelhead could be restored to Alameda Creek.
He convinced his housemate, a student pilot, to fly him over the watershed. Below them, the creek stretched 40 miles from the remote Diablo Range to San Francisco Bay.
“Once I saw how big the watershed was and how untouched the upper river was, I was kind of hooked,” said Miller. “I said, ‘I’m going to work on restoring it. We’ll get steelhead back. Should only take a couple of years.’”
He laughs at that now. It took 28.
Even as Miller began his campaign to restore the creek, the reality was stark. The last time anyone saw a steelhead in the upper part of the creek was in 1967.
“The runs of steelhead in the entire Bay Area are a fraction of what they used to be,” said Patrick Samuel, California Trout senior scientist. “The watersheds that drain directly into San Francisco Bay may have a few dozen to a couple of hundred adult fish successfully spawning each year. There's very little comprehensive monitoring to know the exact status of the Central California Coast steelhead in this region.”
A series of road culverts, rubber water control dams, and other structures blocked upstream habitat. While some Chinook salmon tried to spawn in the lower creek, steelhead could not access their spawning grounds higher in the watershed.
Yet signs of resilience remained. In the upper watershed, populations of resident rainbow trout—steelhead that don’t migrate to the ocean— survived. Scientists at the NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz showed that some of these fish still carry the genetic traits associated with migration. That offered hope that if juveniles could migrate downstream to the Pacific, they might return as adult steelhead.
The returning steelhead could reach high-quality spawning habitat more than 20 miles upstream in the Sunol Regional Wilderness.
“The Sunol Regional Wilderness has everything migratory fish are looking for,” said Claire Buchanan, Central California regional director for California Trout. “There’s incredible cobble and gravel for spawning, tree canopy for shade, and constant cool, clean water.”
To drum up early support for opening Alameda Creek, Miller rallied local fishermen and community members to rescue fish stranded below barriers on the creek in front of TV news crews. Residents who paid for water use mailed out day-glow colored postcards to local agencies that said: “I want steelhead back in my creek.”
Miller founded the nonprofit Alameda Creek Alliance in 1997 and helped form the Alameda Creek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup in 1999. It brought together water managers, regulatory agencies, nonprofits, and community groups. Despite many setbacks, the Workgroup slowly began implementing projects to address priorities for steelhead recovery. Over two decades, they worked together to remove unnecessary structures and built fish passage in other places.
By 2023, only one major obstacle remained on the mainstem Alameda Creek.
Near the town of Sunol in Alameda County, a PG&E pipeline crossed under Alameda Creek. It carried natural gas to San Jose and surrounding communities in the South Bay. The pipe was several feet below the surface, but a protective concrete erosion-control mat on top of it created a wall and an 8-foot-high drop in the creek. Most fish couldn’t get past it.
In the summer of 2022, PG&E reached out to California Trout to partner on restoring the area. NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation awarded $4.3 million for the project. PG&E, Oliver de Silva, and a Bay Area foundation provided the rest of the funding to complete the project.
Construction began last summer. First, a team of biologists relocated fish, frogs, and other species and diverted the creek into a pipe. PG&E crews dug a 20-foot-deep trench across the creek bed just downstream of the existing crossing. They installed a new pipeline in the trench and removed the old pipeline and concrete mat. Workers then regraded about 1,800 feet of stream channel to create a gradual, natural slope to replace the 8-foot drop that had existed before.
They finished in fall 2025.
A wide range of partners came together to make the project possible:
For PG&E, this partnership is what pushed this project to the finish line.
"This was a first for us—partnering with conservation organizations to get something like this done," said Kelvin Qiu, PG&E senior project manager. "Working with California Trout and NOAA made the project far more efficient and cost effective. And in the end, we accomplished two things at once: a permanent, safe home for our pipeline and restored fish passage. That's a pretty good outcome."
In November 2025, the very week the pipeline project was finished, biologists spotted a male and female Chinook salmon swimming past the PG&E restoration site. Based on the best available records, this was the first time salmon accessed this part of the watershed since the 1950s. News of the success of the project spread rapidly around the Bay Area and beyond.
But adult steelhead remain more elusive. California Trout set up a PIT tag antenna just upstream of the former PG&E barrier. It detects any fish previously tagged by scientists migrating past the antennas laid on the bottom of the creek bed. As of May 2026, the PIT antenna had not pinged for any adult steelhead moving past the project site. This is not surprising, though. Steelhead mostly travel at night and avoid people, and untagged fish go undetected.
However, in February 2026, an Alameda County Water District employee photographed a male and female steelhead using a fish ladder in the lower watershed on their way upstream. They were the first documented adult steelhead moving upstream on their own past barriers in the lower section of the creek in decades.
“When that photo came out, everyone in the restoration community was thrilled—there had been so many years without steelhead,” said Alison Weber-Stover, NOAA Fisheries ecologist. “Alameda Creek’s restoration gives me so much hope. The potential for steelhead to return to the watershed is far greater than in other areas of San Francisco Bay. And, the 30-year restoration effort is a heartwarming story of what people can do when they work together."
The Alameda County Water District has also documented juvenile rainbow trout moving downstream. Biologists with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission PIT-tagged these fish in upper Alameda Creek. This confirmed the juveniles were migrating toward the ocean—and might someday return as adult steelhead.
Partners are now focused on monitoring and long-term recovery. Scientists are tracking fish movement, expanding tagging and tracking efforts, and identifying priority areas for future restoration.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission plans to open the Alameda Creek Watershed Center, where visitors can learn about the creek’s history and ecology. California Trout helped create an educational curriculum and is currently working on an exhibit about the collaborative restoration project for the Center.
“We’re going to have an exhibit with information about fish passage and why it's important,” said Buchanan. “This is going to get the community even more interested and involved in what's happening in their backyard."
Miller’s work also continues. He’s working with partners to complete projects to:
In the meantime, he’s still watching the upper watershed.
“I think the first time I actually find a spawning steelhead up there, I’ll probably fall down and start crying,” he said.
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