A watery staircase designed to ease returning chinook salmon's path over a concrete structure is finally complete after nearly 10 years of planning, though how many of the increasingly endangered fish will make the trip home this year is anyone's guess.
Each winter, salmon travel from the Pacific Ocean through the Delta to reach their spawning grounds, but many of them encounter an obstacle in Oakley, Calif.: a cement barrier built in 1958 to control Marsh Creek's flows. The ideal spots for spawning lie in tranquil ponds farther upstream, according to a 2004 UC Berkeley study, but the fish cannot get there because of a 6-foot-tall drop structure.
The local preservation group Friends of Marsh Creek Watershed has been working on building a fish ladder to bypass the structure since 2001, and has finally completed the project, which will add an additional seven miles of spawning areas.
The fish ladder is a strange contraption, more like a wide staircase than a ladder. The hope is that the fish will swim through a series of 12 small pools that step up and around the concrete wall. The fish will then swim right through downtown Brentwood, and reach better spawning habitats upstream.
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