Handmade fish ladder helps fish

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Jay Doino, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat restoration biologist, checks out an experimental, temporary fish ladder on Lazy Creek at Bear Creek Park in Medford. The ladder will help juvenile steelhead cross the creek’s box culvert under the Bear Creek Greenway. Mail Tribune / Jamie LuschJamie Lusch

October 26, 2009

By Mark Freeman

Mail Tribune

A contraption of plywood and metal strips is helping do what a dam removal and a new bridge so far has failed to accomplish on their own — turn little Lazy Creek in east Medford into an urban steelhead nursery.

A handmade fish ladder is allowing wild juvenile steelhead to cross the creek's troublesome concrete box culvert in Bear Creek Park, opening nearly one mile of the stream for steelhead rearing habitat.

In the past year, an unused concrete dam was removed from Lazy Creek near its confluence with Bear Creek and a new Highland Avenue bridge was built, helping keep the creek as fish-friendly as possible.

But the culvert where the Bear Creek Greenway crosses Lazy Creek has remained between those two improvements.

Without the makeshift ladder, the 3-inch fish would have to make a 3-foot leap to get into the culvert at normal flows, and that's something even the resilient steelhead can't do.

Jay Doino, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat restoration biologist, designed and helped build the ladder.

"I've seen it pass fish. That's pretty cool," Doino says.

"It's a fairly low-tech solution that we could handle with no engineering."

It'll also bide some time while Medford city officials mull what to do with the park land around the creek.

The Medford Parks and Recreation Department has identified the land as a possible location for a $13.5 million water park.

Parks Director Brian Sjothun says the city is interested in removing the fish-passage problems there once it figures out whether the water park will be built.

So it's now too early to tell what kind of fix — a new bridge or a new culvert — would work best, says Craig Harper, water resources program manager for the Rogue Valley Council of Governments.

"Without knowing what kind of development, if any, that's going to go there, it's hard to predict what you need," Harper says.

In the interim, juvenile steelhead will rely on Doino's design and $200 worth of plywood and metal to reach the lazy upstream water of Lazy Creek.

"If we're lucky, this will help a bit in the meantime," Doino says.

Like dozens of urban streams snaking throughout the Bear Creek Basin, Lazy Creek can play an important role in the life cycle of wild steelhead within the Rogue River Basin.

Not only can Lazy Creek be a place where adult steelhead can spawn, surveys show it can be a crucial refuge for juvenile steelhead. These fish dart from Bear Creek far up tributaries such as Lazy Creek to escape the harsh flows and tumbling cobbles during winter freshets.

In 2007, construction crews removed a 5-foot-tall dam that spanned the bottom of Lazy Creek but served no obvious purpose and was absent from planning maps. That opened the park's portion of Lazy Creek to steelhead use.

But the Greenway culvert has presented a different barrier.

Juveniles normally could not traverse it other than during the same high flows they are seeking to avoid, Doino says.

Doino set out to turn one 3-foot jump into three 1-foot jumps. He designed the ladder to form two small jump pools that the juveniles can use like stairs.

Doino and Neil Wheatley, the Denman Wildlife Area host, built the ladder in the ODFW shop and fastened it to the culvert's concrete two weeks ago after receiving a permit from Medford city officials, Doino says.

The inch-deep water flowing through the culvert is pushed toward the ladder by sandbags, creating a path steelhead can easily follow, Doino says.

Even during low flows one day last week, the ladder works.

While Doino inspects the ladder, a small steelhead darts out of the second stair and almost lands in the culvert, but it falls back into the ladder.

"Ooh, he almost made it," Doino says. "That's encouraging that he made it into the second pool even at these flows."

During even a small rain, the ladder should work wonders, Doino says.

"When the flows come up just a little bit, they'll really start jumping," he says. "When they're really moving, you'll see 10, 15, even 30 fish a minute making attempts."

Though the Rogue Basin is riddled with culverts like this one that block steelhead, the ODFW and RVCOG plan no attempts to pepper the basin with similar structures.

"We need to work toward permanent solutions to fish passage, not load up the valley with temporary ladders," Doino says.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail at mfreeman@mailtribune.com.

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