The Chico Urban Streams Alliance Clean Creeks Project Begins!

by Jennifer Oman

The Chico Urban Streams Alliance (Chico USA) held its official kick-off for the Clean Creeks Project on Thursday, July 21, 2005, at the 5-Mile Recreation Area. The press and public were invited to this kick-off event to learn about the scope of the two-year project, observe Citizen Monitoring, and obtain information on how the public can be a part of keeping our creeks clean.

The Chico Urban Streams Alliance (Chico USA) is a coalition of the City and local environmental and professional groups concerned with the water quality of Chico’s creeks. The coalition has formed with funding from a grant under the Proposition 13 Watershed Protection Grant Program. Funding support has been provided by the California Bay-Delta Program (CALFED), which has an objective to restore ecological health and improve water management by working with the community at a watershed level. The State Water Resources Control Board awarded the grant to the City of Chico. The Chico USA partners include:

City of Chico – Project Sponsor
The City is the grant recipient and will provide the fiscal management of the grant, overseeing the project components and providing project support through their Storm Water Management Program.

Butte Environmental Council (BEC)
Public Education and Community Outreach: BEC will be conducting a public survey in the fall of 2005 to find out what the public knows about local urban runoff water quality issues. Based on the results of this survey a multi-media outreach campaign will be organized for the purposes of public education and community outreach. One-on-one outreach to potentially polluting businesses will be part of the overall outreach and education campaign.

The public can look forward to brochures, a creek-watch hotline, public presentations, radio and television ads and other media products to learn more about how to keep our streams and creeks clean.

Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance
Project Management and Citizen Monitoring: The Alliance will provide the project manager for the grant and will be expanding its citizen monitoring program that was begun in 2004 for the upper portions of Big Chico Creek. Citizen monitoring applies user-friendly, scientific methods to assess stream health. These methods are specifically intended for use by volunteers and they measure water chemistry, flows, stream channel shape and aquatic insect populations. Training is provided for the volunteers, who commit six weekend mornings a year (May to October) to conduct the monitoring.

This new grant will expand the monitoring program in Big Chico creek from its present four upper stream sites to include the entire length of the creek. Current monitors include classrooms, college students, families and individuals. All are welcome to participate.

Kennedy/Jenks Consultants
Best Management Practices Performance Evaluation: Kennedy/Jenks Consultants will be conducting a two-year study to evaluate the effectiveness of the City’s Best Management Practices (BMPs) for storm water. Storm-water is the runoff from rainfall. BMPs are structures or ways of doing things that control, prevent, remove or reduce pollution. The BMPs that will be evaluated in this study are the structural technologies that are installed in new development (e.g. detention basins). The US Environmental Protection Agency requires the City to treat storm water with BMPs and remove pollutants before they can contaminate Big Chico Creek, Little Chico Creek, and Lindo Channel. The City will use the results of the study to site and design future storm water BMPs, which will be installed as Chico continues to grow.

History of Chico USA

The Chico Urban Streams Alliance began over coffee at Upper Crust when Suzanne Gibbs, past coordinator for the Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance, and Jim Graydon, Regional Manager for Kennedy/Jenks Consultants, talked about California’s new program to protect streams from urban runoff pollution in small and medium sized cities. Large cities (100,000 population and larger) have been required under the Clean Water Act to have programs to reduce pollution in their storm drains since 1987, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California State Water Resources Control Board extended that requirement to smaller cities in 2003, requiring them to obtain a permit to discharge urban runoff (or “stormwater”) to surface streams.

Gibbs and Graydon both wanted to help the City by developing a grant-funded project that would help the City to educate its citizens, improve the way new development projects handle urban runoff and involve the public in tracking stream health. Streaminders became a partner and Butte Environmental Council joined the effort, bringing its expertise in environmental education to the team. The group brought the proposal to the City, who became the project sponsor and the partners — now the Chico Urban Streams Alliance (Chico USA ) — unsuccessfully applied to the State Water Resources Control Board for a grant in 2002.

Chico USA tried again in 2003, with the Alliance taking over Streaminders’ role, and was awarded over $400,000 for a public education program, a volunteer citizen stream monitoring program, and a study to test the structures that are used to treat urban runoff in new development. Susan Strachan, current Watershed Coordinator for the Alliance reflected on the uniqueness of the effort. “What’s really wonderful about this project is the way the community came together to support our City in its efforts to keep Chico’s creeks clean.

The City also went the extra mile in response, donating its staff time to help oversee the project and provide fiscal management. It is a true collaboration. With funding from CALFED, we are able to provide education and citizen participation that is way beyond what the City could have done with City resources under its permit for its storm drain system.”

The Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance (the Alliance) has recently established the Big Chico Creek Citizen Monitoring Program, and has been providing watershed education and training to citizen volunteers interested in participating in monitoring activities. Phase One began last year in the foothill zone of the watershed, funded by the Sierra Nevada Alliance. Phase Two has just recently been funded by CALFED and will expand the monitoring to include the mountain and valley zones of the watershed as well.

Citizens commit one morning a month from May to October and sample water quality chemistry and measure flows in Big Chico Creek. Twice a year, they sample aquatic insects in the stream bottom. The monitoring sites range from the Highway 32 crossing down to the mouth of Big Chico Creek. The Alliance provides training in methods that are specifically intended for citizen volunteers. Current volunteers include high school classes, university classes, families and individuals.

The information that is gathered takes a snapshot of creek health from the mountains to the River on one day each month. Over time, this information will be used to observe changes resulting from natural trends and human activities, including both land use changes and restoration projects. Timmarie Hamill, Citizen Monitoring Coordinator for the Alliance, says, “People enjoy not only getting out and enjoying the creek, but knowing that they are helping to track its condition and make sure that Big Chico Creek continues to stay healthy.”

One of the key parameters that are being measured is the temperature of pools where spring run salmon hold over the summer before spawning in the fall. Big Chico Creek’s spring run has been severely diminished, since the 1950s when a fish ladder was installed in Iron Canyon just upstream of Salmon Hole, to help the spring run navigate the basalt boulders in the stream channel during times of low flow. Numbers of fish have decreased from 1,000 in 1958 to 46 in 2003. The Iron Canyon fish ladder is currently in disrepair and doesn’t help the fish get to the cooler pools up on the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve, often leaving them trapped in Salmon Hole. The Alliance has installed temperature recording devices in Salmon Hole and four pools upstream of Iron Canyon to track high summer temperatures, which can cause disease in spring run salmon if they get too high. Volunteers also measure stream temperature at each monitoring site.

This article originally appeared in Summer/Fall 2005 Environmental News.