Project Outcome:  (3/2006 Update)  The Walker Creek Watershed Enhancement Program has successfully restored 7 miles of stream, including the successful construction and placement of over 12 biotechnical stream bank stabilization structures.  These structures have, and will continue to over time, significantly reduced nutrient loading to this overall watershed, promoting water clarity and higher dissolved oxygen for salmon and steelhead.  This project also includes readily sustainable cattle management techniques such as fencing to keep cattle out of the ecologically fragile stream bank areas, and the planting of thousands of native trees over this 7 mile area.  These successful improvements have now produced much naturally sustained shade cover and song bird habitat, as well as much improved fish habitat (by inducing lower water temperatures leading to more dissolved oxygen in the water), and reduced erosion and resulting sediment load over the entire lower watershed.

More information about the Marin County RCD is availiable on their website:  http://sonomamarinrcds.org/district-mc/.

Project Outcome:  This project enabled research to be performed to evaluate the conditions of Sonoma Creek as a watershed and aquatic habitat and identyfy the limiting factors that must be managed to maintain the Steelhead trout and Chinook salmon runs. The Sonoma Ecology Center has been revegetating the creek to decrease the erosion of fine sediment and create better spawning/wintering habitats. For more information, please visit www.sonomaecologycenter.org.

Project Outcome:   (8/2006 Update) As state mandated actions weren’t coming together as fast as required by the overall grant process, the Regional Water Board withdrew these grant funds.  However, many of the needed sediment erosion reduction projects were accomplished in the watershed, quite successfully, using a combination of public and private funding and initiative.  Some of these projects, particularly those just planted in Spring 2005, were at least partially washed out by the subsequent historically high flows occurring near the 2006 New Year’s holiday.

More information can be found on the South Sonoma County RCD on their website at:  http://sscrcd.org/area/petaluma.html.

Project Outcome: (2/2007 Update) This project has made the Napa River one of the most surveyed watersheds in the greater bay area, over thirty different stream sites were monitored, there were yearly monitoring and collection reports. New species of aquatic insects were discovered. The Steelhead Trout is successfully being protected because of these efforts put and the current biodiversity of this area has surpassed what is generally found in climax forests.

The full project report can be viewed at:  http://www.friendsofthenapariver.org/projects.php#macro.

Expected project outcomes include reduction in nitrogen loading of 30 pounds/year, phosphorus of 11 pounds/year, A biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) reduction of 70 pounds/year, and overall sediment/siltation reduction of 9 tons/year over these large watersheds. For more information, please see the Bay Institute's website at: http://www.bay.org/watershed_education.htm