Water Resources Collections and Archives

In October 2000, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and California Secretary of Resources Mary Nichols joined in a symbolic ceremony to begin the removal of the 90-year old Saeltzer Dam on Clear Creek in northwestern California, a long-known barrier to fish migration. The removal of Saeltzer Dam was intended to benefit populations of federally listed spring-run chinook salmon and steelhead trout by providing access to approximately 10 miles of upstream habitat. In April of 2003, we visited the former site of Saeltzer Dam. Through surveys, sketch maps, and photographs of the area immediately upstream of the former dam site, we identified a number of changes to creek morphology since removal of the dam and a previous geomorphic survey that took place in the spring of 2001. These changes included lateral bank erosion of up to 60 feet in banks composed of mixed unconsolidated sediments, bed incision, deposition of large gravel and cobble bars, desiccation of some upland vegetation, and the complete removal of many riparian areas. We found that the changes to Clear Creek resulting from the removal of Saeltzer Dam generally conformed to the simple predictive models of geomorphic response to dam removal. Specifically, bank erosion, channel degradation, deposition, and riparian mortality are all components of the creek’s natural adjustment to post-dam conditions. We believe that the lack of significant changes found in a prior post-project assessment were due to the extant riparian vegetation and lack of significant high flows in the first spring following dam removal.