A public scoping meeting will take place on Saturday, 10 a.m., at the Malibu Public Library, to give the public an opportunity to comment on a National Park Service and Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains proposal to remove a series of obstructions from Upper Solstice Creek, in an effort to revive the endangered Southern California steelhead trout.
This is one of a series of steelhead trout replenishing projects taking place in Malibu, including a study of a proposal to remove the Rindge Dam from Malibu Creek. While applauding the protection of endangered species, some citizens question the commitment of taxpayer dollars to reintroduce and replenish the trout, while humanitarian projects go unfunded.
“They’ve done a lot of good, but this is a waste of taxpayer’s money,” said Ronald Rindge, a third generation Malibu Rindge. “What about the human species?”
There is contention as to whether Upper Solstice Creek has been a spawning ground for the steelhead species for thousands of years. The creek has also fostered a debate over whether steelhead are indigenous to the area or that the trout were stocked by anglers in the 1930s. The debate also questions whether or not the steelhead, after receiving freshwater signals in the ocean to swim up stream to optimum spawning grounds, can jump a series of manmade dams and the Arizona Crossing, designed to create a habitat for the fish in the ’30s.
Conservation Director of California Trout Jim Edmondson said that steelhead have been present in Solstice Creek for 10,000 years, and that the species is present in every coastal stream in California. He also said the removal of the small “check” dams on the creek will allow the natural flushing of sediment from the streambeds, bringing in new shale and gravel for laying eggs, and permit the natural thinning of flora and fauna to provide abundant insects for newly hatched trout.
“Removing manmade structures will restore natural functions and systems that have been in place for thousands of year,” Edmondson said.
Edmonson explained that the only trout stocking that has ever been recorded in Upper Solstice Creek was in 1927 and 1932, and that it wasn’t Southern California steelhead, it was brook trout-a species that has a natural aversion to the warm, almost Mediterranean Malibu climate.
“I have big doubts about what they’ve been saying,” Rindge said in response. “In the ’30s they were stocking rivers from San Luis Obispo to San Diego, and I wonder if the steelhead weren’t part of that effort.”
Rindge grew up near the Coral Beach Café, where BeauRivage is now located, and remembers the construction of Pacific Coast Highway. He also remembers only seeing two or three steelhead trout during the summer of 1939. While he is happy to have the species back in Upper Solstice Creek, he claims that it is too dry to sustain the fish during drought years, and that, if the dams are removed, the resulting pools will disappear along with the trout’s habitat.
“No sense in stocking steelhead if they’re going to end up dead on a dried out creek,” he said.
The upcoming Saturday meeting will give the public an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed project in Solstice Creek, and this input will be factored into the overall cost of the project. Gary Busteed, natural resource specialist for the National Park Service, said the project is going to be subcontracted and the final proposal for the removal of all or some of the dams, or reconstruction of existing dams, will affect the cost and the duration of the project.
“Removing [the structures] totally will be the quickest method and the least costly,” Busteed said.
He speculated that total removal would last up two years, although he did not have a dollar figure. Busteed said that grants would fund the Upper Solstice dam removal and steelhead-stocking project.