Male 1: Looking at the beautiful blue waters of Fossil Creek. And you don’t need much imagination to see it as a wild and scenic river and now it officially pens that time. In 2009, President Barrack Obama signed a law naming Fossil Creek one of the nation’s wild and scenic rivers. A portion of the Verde River is the only other Arizona water way to carry that designation.
The wild scenic river designation protects riverside along both sides of the river corridor blocks dams and other harmful water projects and preserves the river’s free flowing nature. Considering the way Fossil Creek looks today, it’s hard to imagine that only a few years ago, most of its flow was diverted to turn the turbines in two 100-year old power plants. The urban plants were modern and marble today when roads were in short supply and all the work was done by hand.
Mike Stewart: The project construction have that magnitude had to be pretty dumping because if you could see this whole area, there were no roads, all the rest was big old canyon with lots of water running through it. So all of the equipment that was brought in, the labor was brought in on first back of the old train that sort of thing.
Male 1: The two plants were still producing about four megawatts of power in 1999, when Arizona public service decided voluntarily to shut down operation on the creek and declamation to plants. Several years of planning and preparation were required before restoration of the river could begin. The Arizona Game and Fish Department worked hand in hand with many other agencies including the bureau of reclamation, US Fish and Wildlife and US tourist service on a native fish restoration project in advance to return a full water flow.
But restoring full flow to Fossil Creek meant more than just shutting down the plants. The native fish restoration project took years to plan and included building barrier about 2/3 the way down the river to keep none native fish from swimming too far offspring. Once the barrier was in place, the native species have to be caught and removed from the spring was no simple test. To keep the stretch of the fish at a minimum there were in long line or flown out by helicopter in 55 gallon drums and attract the short distance to special holding tanks and into the care of the experts from the Arizona game and Fish Department.
The native fish that were salvaged include speckle days, round tail job, signora and desert suckers. After Fossil Creek had been cleared up the none native species that were a threat to the native fish, the process was reversed and the salvage fish will return to the creek as quickly as possible. In June of 2005, the diversion dam was officially closed and Fossil Creek began to roar to life. It took another three years to completely remove the dam and Fossil Creek is growing more like its old wild self everyday.
Shaking off the century observe to the stage power plant. Prior to having 95% of its flow converted to the power plants Fossil Creek supported a distinctive aquatic ecosystem. The highly mineralized water resulted in travertine dam, large pools, and cascading waterfalls. Now that the whole flow of 43 cubic feet per second has been restored those dams, pools and waterfalls are expected to rebuild naturally over time.
Mike Stewart: We sat down in June of 2005 where the supposed schedule of almost five years. It’s going to take us for the time we get everything plain down and because a lot of the work once we get everything out has to be re-contoured we have to restate the native vegetation. We got to re-contour the whole lake bed to make it look like it did initially well it’s going to take five years. It will be in the middle of 2010 before we’re done.
The reason for the demolition of flowing is we have to put everything back to its natural state. It has to be taken out because of that because we have a lot of tourist come in to this area and it’s not safe to go there.
Male 1: Like the spring of 2009 the Creek was really coming back to life and so with the native fish populations.
Scott Rogers: We’re done here sampling the fish in Fossil Creek, its index sampling just trying to get an idea of what's in here specifically we’re looking at the chub and so we’ve got an index of the relative opponents of the chub and that’s what we’re trying to get right now.
Male 1: Scott and his crew plays 60 nets along different sections of the creek then they measure and check each fish before releasing it back into the water.
Scott Rogers: We’ve got hoop nets that are bated and the place to random locations and we’re making the assumptions at those hoop nets are capturing a fraction of the fish and that that fraction remains stable. So we need an index of abundance, it’s not an actual abundance of fish.
Male 1: The Arizona Game and Fish Department closed Fossil Creek for fishing in 2005 to give the natives a chance to come back and they’ve recovered so well that in October 2009 the Creek will become the country’s first blue ribbon catch and release round tail chub fishing.
Scott Rogers: There are a lot of very small fish in here but there are some large chub and the tricky part is going to be trying to get your fly, they pass the small fish to the big fish because there are a lot of chub in here and they're incredibly naïve. That’s going to be very easy fishing for at least a while. But you're looking at the largest chub maybe 12 or 14 inches. There's a lot of chub in here between six and nine inches.
Male 1: Fossil Creek is fed by a spring with a constant year round flow and it cuts through two national horse as under 17 miles from it’s head water just below it. The journey to return this river to its natural state has been a long but satisfying one for all departments involved.
Scott Rogers: This is just sort of the completion of the project that we’re started many, many years ago and it’s very exciting to sort of to have closure with this particular stream. A lot of people are working very hard to get this.
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