The Alameda Creek watershed covers an area of 633 square miles and once supported a steelhead trout fishery. Steelhead trout are anadromous fish, living out their adult lives in the ocean and migrating up fresh water streams and rivers to spawn and rear their young. Modifications to the Alameda Creek streambed and urbanization of the surrounding land, however, eliminated spawning areas and made it impossible for steelhead to migrate upstream. As a result, steelhead have been absent from Alameda Creek and its tributaries for several decades.

In 2005, ACWD received $1 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to initiate two projects that will improve steelhead migration in Alameda Creek. Through the 2005 San Francisco Bay Salmonid Habitat Restoration Fund, NFWF has helped to fund 11 projects that will benefit salmon and steelhead trout in central and southern San Francisco Bay watersheds.

ACWD’s two projects are part of a much larger effort to restore steelhead in the Alameda Creek watershed. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Zone 7 Water Agency, East Bay Regional Park District, and Alameda County Public Works Agency are all involved in projects that will make Alameda Creek a more fish-friendly waterway.

		Rubber Dam 2 Decommissioning and Foundation Modification Project
		This project is located in the City of Fremont within the Alameda Creek Flood Control Channel adjacent to the Quarry Lakes Regional Recreational Area. This project will consist of: 1. Removal of the fabric portion of the District's Rubber Dam #2. 2. Removal of a section of the dam's foundation.

		Alameda Creek Pipeline No. 1 Fish Screen
		This project is located in the City of Fremont along the north side of the Alameda Creek Flood Control Channel between Mission Boulevard and the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge. The project consists of the installation of a fish screen facility to include multiple self-cleaning cylindrical fish screens, fencing, control panel and electrical boxes, and a section of new pipe to connect the fish screens' pipe manifold to the existing Alameda Creek Pipeline No. 1 diversion pipe.