Next Monthly Club Meeting & Program

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Speaker Will Be Presenting in Person

Camellia Room
at Heather Farm Community Center
1540 Marchbanks Drive, Walnut Creek

Doors Open at 6:30 p.m.
Meeting Starts at 7:30 p.m.
Invites to the Online Session to be
Sent to Members via Email

Sunol Valley Fish Passage Project,
with Claire Buchanan of CalTrout

Claire Buchanan was born and raised in Northern California. She has always loved and appreciated the wild resources in California. She graduated from University of California Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences and has a diverse background ranging from agency work, start-up experience and most recently, ecological consulting. Her passion for conservation and adoration for the outdoors overlaps both in her work and her recreational interest, Claire loves backpacking, angling, paddling, and swimming. She is a Senior Project Manager for the Bay Area Region of California Trout and is leading an exciting restoration project on Alameda Creek in Sunol Valley.

Sunol Valley Fish Passage Project:

Alameda Creek is the largest local tributary to the San Francisco Bay and historically produced the largest numbers of Chinook salmon, lamprey, and steelhead in the South Bay. It is also the ancestral lands of the Muwekma Ohlone people. In 2022, former barriers at the BART weir and inflatable bladder dams in Fremont were made passable by fish due to newly constructed fish ladders by the Alameda County Water District. This incredible opportunity for salmonids to migrate throughout the Alameda Creek watershed for the first time in 50 years is the product of decades of hard work to improve fish passage by a myriad of partners in the longstanding Alameda Creek Fisheries Work Group. The last major barrier on mainstem Alameda Creek remaining is in Sunol Valley near the intersection of Interstate 680 and State Route 84. It is created by a protruding layer of concrete across Alameda Creek that protects a major gas pipeline owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). The concrete prevents passage for migratory fish during most stream flows. As California’s cycle of drought and deluge continues, resolving this barrier to fish passage will ensure fish access upstream regardless of their species, life stage or size, and if it’s a wet or dry year and open up over 20 miles of high quality habitat.