Wild Trout River Site of New Fight : Public Works Doesn’t Give a Dam About Small Fry, Fishermen Say

A living, breathing wild trout stream, 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The notion always did rest crazily on the mind, like too much champagne.

And maybe it was too good to be true.

The West Fork of the San Gabriel River, after it flows out of Cogswell Reservoir in the San Gabriel Mountains, gurgles and hisses its way in and out of quiet riffles, past old, twisty oaks, sycamores and assorted conifers, on its way to a downstream reservoir.

For 5.35 miles of the journey, it’s a wild trout stream--thanks to hundreds of volunteers who contributed thousands of hours of labor and a lot of dollars to make it that way.

After nearly four years, beginning in 1981, volunteers--many of them from the Pasadena Casting Club and the San Gabriel Valley Fly Fishers--turned a muddy, barren, sorry-looking scar on the landscape into a crystal-clear trout stream. It was complete with streamside vegetation providing natural shade canopies, an insect population, spawning gravels . . . and a wild population of rainbow trout, 16 miles from the San Bernardino Freeway.

They had taken the West Fork of the San Gabriel from ground zero to the most heavily used wild trout stream in Southern California. What’s more, they did it with zero tax dollars--just a bunch of fly-fishing conservationists, showing what a little dedication, planning, money and hard work can do.

All the work was necessary because of a 1981 flood caused when the L.A. County Flood Control District (now known as the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works) decided to drain Cogswell Reservoir for dam repairs. Too much water was released too quickly. The resulting torrent swept away more than 100,000 cubic yards of stream bottom--including spawning gravel and critical streamside vegetation.

A $2-million suit brought by the Department of Fish and Game is still pending against the county agency. Now, the two agencies--reportedly near a settlement just a few weeks ago--are at odds with each other again over another incident.

The Department of Public Works opened up four 84-inch dam valves and one 14-inch valve as part of a repair project to the valves’ hydraulic power unit. On March 19, for 11 minutes, the West Fork’s flow increased about 15-fold, to about 2,100 cubic feet per second (CFS).

An estimated 20% to 25% of the stream’s spawning gravel was displaced. And so was an entire year’s class of just-spawned trout.

“The 15-fold increase in flow--which brought with it sediment and silt from the reservoir bottom--killed an entire year class of recently spawned trout,” said Jim Edmondson, regional manager for CalTrout and once a board member of the 256-member Pasadena Casting Club.

CalTrout is a statewide fly fishing organization which encourages the development of more wild trout waters in California.

The damage caused by the March 19 water release doesn’t compare to the devastation that occurred during the 1981 flood, but CalTrout, the Pasadena Casting Club and the Department of Fish and Game reacted with some heat.

“The heavy-handed way the Department of Public Works acted (by releasing the water) has upset a lot of people, including the Fish and Game Commission,” Edmondson said. “We’ve lost all confidence in the ability of the Department of Public Works to cooperate with the public.

“We’re talking about the most heavily used wild trout stream in Southern California, and in terms of use by fishermen it ranks in the top 10 statewide.”

Said Bob Fletcher, deputy DFG director: “We were very close to those people (Department of Public Works) to settling our lawsuit when we were slapped in the face by another unauthorized water release. We thought we were close to a total commitment from everyone involved to protect that stream. We’d even reached agreement on the establishment of a trust fund to help maintain it, when this happened.”

Lawsuits by the DFG, however, don’t carry a lot of teeth, points out attorney Barrett McInerney, who has spearheaded legal battles to protect other trout streams, such as the on-going case of a group of Mammoth Lakes fly fishermen who are battling the L.A. Department of Water and Power about trout habitat in Mono County’s Rush Creek.

“The bottom line is that in the case of a lawsuit, there is virtually no leverage the DFG has over Los Angeles County,” he said.

“If the DFG wins in court, any money that would come out of it would go to the state general fund, not the DFG. It’s a strange situation, where the threat of a lawsuit is more of a threat to the DFG than it is to the Department of Public Works, because it would cost the DFG $50,000 to $60,000 to pay for the lawsuit and they’d get none of the money back if they won the suit. A settlement is different. It can be worked out so that settlement money would go to the DFG.

“There’s legislation pending that would change that, so that lawsuit money involving wildlife issues would be directed back to the DFG. But it won’t affect this case.”

Said Edwin J. Dubiel, Deputy Attorney General handling the case for the DFG: “In this kind of case, a settlement can be fashioned in such a way that the money would go back to wildlife instead of the state general fund. In the event of a court case, if the DFG won a judgment, money would go to the general fund, but the DFG could get it through special legislation.”

Department of Public Works administrators believe that conflicts with the DFG about Public Works’ operation of Cogswell Dam and the downstream wild trout habitat will continue.

When asked if it’s possible to operate Cogswell Dam in a manner that will not harm downstream trout habitat, deputy director Orville McCollom said: “We have some difficulty believing that it can. I’m not saying it can’t be . . . but it appears to us that it’s extremely difficult. The opening of those valves (on March 19) was normal and proper maintenance work on the dam. If that causes a problem for the DFG, well . . . “

Said Roslyn Robson, Department of Public Works spokesperson: “Our dams (Public Works operates 14 dams in L.A. County) are getting older. Our dam safety committee is setting up a schedule to test the valves in all of them. They may have to be opened every six months, to make sure they’re operational.

“There will also be times when it will be necessary to draw the reservoir down to a safe level. On the March 19 release, the reservoir was not full. But it wasn’t at safe storm level, either. During storm season, we try to keep all the reservoirs at ‘cushion pool’ level.

“We don’t know any way to safely operate that dam without damaging trout habitat. Those valves must be 100% opened when they’re tested. The DFG is going to have to ask itself if that stream is a good place to maintain a wild trout area. We must opt first for dam safety. The DFG has been notified of every one of our water releases.”

Cogswell Dam, at an elevation of 2,385 feet in the San Gabriels, was completed in 1934. It’s a rock-fill structure, 585 feet long, 750 feet wide at base and 265 feet high. Cogswell Reservoir is a flood control reservoir. When full, the reservoir covers 146 acres.

The DPW isn’t anti-recreation.

Said Robson:

“We have recreation in a number of our areas--bicycle and equestrian trails, and fishing in some of the reservoirs. But this case (West Fork of the San Gabriel) is one where two agencies have differing needs for the same area.”

Said Keith Anderson, the DFG’s chief of inland fisheries for Southern California: “We want a better understanding of their (Public Works) operations at that dam. We know of other reservoir dams with the same type of butterfly valves where we don’t have this problem, where valve tests are made every 2 to 5 years, not every six months.”

Edmondson said his organization is examining dam operations at other state locations where wild trout populations exist below dams.

“So far we’ve identified dozens of California streams downstream from dams where problems of this sort don’t happen,” he said. “The entire west slope of the Sierra, for example.”

Edmondson also wants the Department of Public Works to maintain higher water levels in Cogswell Reservoir. At low water levels, he said, silt and sediment pile up near the dam’s valves and buries downstream spawning gravels when water is released.

Anderson said he didn’t believe the recent water release killed any adult rainbow trout. But “tens of thousands” of tiny, just-spawned trout fry, he said, were lost when the water volume began to move large amounts of gravel.

The West Fork of the San Gabriel isn’t officially part of the California’s wild trout stream program. But it is a candidate to be so designated. Presently, it’s under special, catch-and-release management.

Jim Edmondson of CalTrout sees the stakes in the battle for the West Fork as going far beyond the loss of a few truckloads of spawning gravel.

In California, a growing number of trout fishermen are questioning the wisdom of the DFG’s $20 million-per-year bill for operating its trout hatcheries. Why not, fly fishermen wonder, designate more state trout waters as wild trout waters? By phasing in more catch-and-release waters, they argue, the DFG might one day not have to spend millions for Purina trout chow and the enormous utility bills at the state’s trout hatcheries.

The West Fork, so close to the Southern California population mass, is a showcase of wild trout fishing, they point out.

Edmondson: “The rise in the interest in this type (catch and release) of trout fishing is spectacular. The growth in the sale of state fishing licenses between 1976 and 1985 was minor. But any fly fishing club will tell you the growth of fly fishing has been dramatic.

“The West Fork was never intended to be a blue ribbon wild trout stream. It will never produce trophy-size trout. But its value, it seems to us, is as an instructional trout stream. It’s a marvelous place where a father can teach his son how to fly fish and learn the values of conservation, and experience the excitement of catching a wild, stream-bred trout and returning it unharmed to its environment.”