Fall Creek Dam getting new fish facility

PORTLAND, Ore. – Construction crews are rebuilding Fall Creek Dam’s Adult Fish Collection Facility southeast of Eugene, Oregon. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is doing this to meet requirements of the 2008 Willamette Project biological opinions to support the safe collection and transport of wild spring Chinook and winter steelhead upstream of the dam.

The Fall Creek site is an active construction site and Corps employees are still collecting fish at that facility. The older fish collection facility can be problematic for the fish and the facility can be precarious for the fish handlers.

This rebuild is similar to ones conducted at Foster Dam and Minto, on the South Santiam and North Santiam rivers, respectively. Construction began October 2016, is scheduled to be completed May 2018 and will cost an estimated $25 million.

The Corps is rebuilding these structures because it is committed to actions included in the 2008 Willamette Project biological opinions that avoid jeopardizing wild spring Chinook and winter steelhead. The Corps’ actions at Fall Creek play into a larger regional effort supporting endangered species recovery in the Upper Willamette River Basin.

Completed in 1966, Fall Creek Dam is a rockfill structure with a gated concrete spillway and outlet works for regulating reservoir levels. It is located at river mile 7.2 on Fall Creek, a tributary of the Middle Fork Willamette River, about 20 miles southeast of Eugene.