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52 °F 5 Day Forecast Monday, October 20, 2003 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | eSouthernOregon | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend October 6, 2003 Return to the creek Small change in waterflow opens stream to salmon By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune As a large fall chinook salmon flops over a small metal wall and into a culvert beneath Interstate 5, a smile creases Jerry Marmon’s face. It may be one small jump for the chinook, but it represents a giant leap in an effort to bring salmon back to areas of Jackson Creek that have been off-limits to these fish since the Eisenhower years. The Oregon Department of Transportation, with help from Oregon’s salmon-restoration plan, changed the water flow through the mammoth culvert beneath I-5 and opened more than 10 miles of spawning habitat for salmon. Advertisement Now wild chinook are headed into Central Point subdivisions, and by the end of this decade could be finning all the way to Jacksonville. "It’s great, isn’t it?" says Marmon, ODOT’s regional environmental coordinator who oversaw the $1,300 project. "Obviously, it’s not possible to replace the culvert under I-5. So we’re retrofitting ones we can’t replace." The Jackson Creek culvert is the latest snapshot in the big picture of wild salmon recovery under the Oregon Plan for Salmon Restoration, which targets streams like Jackson Creek and restores them to more fish-friendly conditions. The culvert was deemed the worst impediment to fish passage on ODOT’s Jackson County property because it alone blocked salmon from all but a sliver of Jackson Creek, a lower Bear Creek tributary crossed by I-5 near Blackwell Road. "It was a high priority to get that one replaced," says biologist Jerry Vogt of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "It’s still not perfect, but it’s definitely an improvement over what they had." During I-5’s construction in the late 1950s, crews built a large box-culvert to funnel Jackson Creek under the freeway. The culvert was designed more for flood control than fish-passage, especially during fall’s low flows. Marmon says the creek flows about an inch deep and swiftly across the wide concrete in the fall — the same time wild fall chinook head from the Rogue River into Bear Creek and its tributaries to spawn. The design effectively blocked migrating salmon at the culvert’s east side, limiting the fish to only a short stretch of Jackson Creek east of I-5. ODOT crews recently installed a series of weirs — small walls staggered so the culvert looks like a maze — to raise and slow the water. Even during early October’s notoriously low flows, the weirs raise the water level to 6-7 inches — enough for the 3-foot-long chinook to wind through the weirs like mice through the watery maze. The final weir creates a pool that the fish reach by jumping over a foot-high wall. Once there, they nose into the current and head upstream. Now, the chinook can reach 10½ miles of Jackson Creek and its tributaries that wind through Seven Oaks Farm and several new subdivisions. The stretch ends at Hanley Road, where a culvert blocks passage. That Hanley Road culvert, owned by Jackson County, is also tapped as a top priority for change, Vogt says. Jackson County is looking at retrofitting the Hanley Road culvert, county engineer Dale Petrasek says. Without the money and expertise, the county is seeking grants to pay for the work and relying on the federal Bureau of Reclamation for help in designing fish-passage there, Petrasek says. When done, salmon and steelhead could continue west into Jackson Creek’s upper waters. "Once the county fixes that one at Hanley Road, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have salmon and steelhead all the way to Jacksonville," Marmon says. The I-5 project cost only $1,300 because ODOT used its maintenance staff to retrofit the culvert, Marmon says. The work took about a day, and the cost was covered from a combination of federal and ODOT funds that are part of the Oregon Plan, he says. "It was a cheap fix for us, and we got a lot of benefit," Marmon says. "As long as we can continue using maintenance crews and state funds, we should be able to continue on this kind of path and take care of more of these." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! ADVERTISERS SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Real Estate Showcase Food for Thought Hike of the Week Wellness Connection Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Openings Prime Times