Gold Creek Fish Habitat Restoration Allows Salmon to Return Home to Spawn This fall, chinook and coho salmon were able to swim into Gold Creek, a tributary to the Sammamish River near Woodinville, because of stream restoration work performed by King County's Department of Natural Resources. King County DNR engineers and biologists replaced an impassable metal culvert-- a covered waterway under a trail-- with a large box culvert, a natural gravel streambed, and a series of stepped pools. The existing metal culvert that channeled Gold Creek under the Sammamish River Trail blocked fish passage, so Department of Natural Resources engineers and biologists replaced it with a shorter concrete box culvert, providing a more natural open channel. Staff also rehabilitated 120 feet of Gold Creek stream channel, adding boulders, cobbles, and large woody debris to form a new channel with step pools. The design allows fish to pass upstream providing critical rearing and refuge habitat to juvenile salmon. Puget Sound chinook were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in March of 1999. Construction took place this August to minimize construction impact to fish in Gold Creek and the Sammamish River. This project was completed as part of King County's early action efforts to restore native salmon populations. The project was made possible by partial funding from the Washington State Salmon Recovery Funding Board (SRFB).

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