DAM FOES CHEER PROTECTION PLAN FOR RARE TROUT.

Byline: Marni McEntee Daily News Staff Writer

Environmentalists and anglers have set their sights on replenishing a run of steelhead trout in Malibu Creek, where the elusive migrant once was plentiful before urbanization and a dam besieged its habitat.

A recent federal government proposal to list the steelhead as an endangered species may hasten that work, according to Jim Edmondson, executive director of California Trout Inc., an anglers' group leading the effort.

Primarily, Edmondson and others are hoping the proposed listing will help bring about funding to remove the 100-foot-high Rindge Dam, the chief obstacle in the steelhead's historical migration from the Pacific to Malibu Creek.

``The listing would put the critter in what you would call intensive care,'' said Edmondson, who has championed removal of the dam for more than a decade.

The National Marine Fisheries Service last month nominated the steelhead for protection as an endangered and threatened species throughout California and along most of the West Coast. A final ruling on the listing must be made within a year.

The number of naturally spawning steelhead in California is estimated at 250,000 adults, less than half of the population 30 years ago. The hard-working fish, a type of rainbow trout, is born in fresh water, migrates to the sea to mature, and then muscles its way way back to its freshwater stream to spawn.

Malibu Creek, which once had up to 1,000 fish, now has only 50 to 75 steelhead. The creek is the southernmost run of the steelhead, once abundant from the Bering Sea to the Tijuana River.

About 500 steelhead run in the Santa Clara, Ventura and Santa Ynez rivers and in the creek. Runs farther south are extinct.

``Now that the federal government has issued a proposed rule and that rule deals with Malibu Creek, there's the prospect not only for highlighting the problem but seeking funding to make things happen,'' Edmondson said.

The impending demise of steelhead is just one aspect of a decline in species biodiversity in California. Human population growth and pressure on natural resources, leading to loss or degradation of some species' habitats, are the causes, according to a steelhead restoration plan released in February by the state Department of Fish and Game.

Steelhead runs in Ventura and Los Angeles counties are imperiled mainly by inadequate stream flows, dams and water-diversion projects.

The preliminary cost estimate for removing Rindge Dam ranges from $4 million to $17 million, Fish and Game steelhead specialist Dennis McEwan said. Removing the structure also would help release sediment to replenish beaches below.

``There's a very good potential for restoring steelhead in Southern California, particularly because we have a situation where many of the rivers are degraded in the lower reaches, but the upper reaches are pristine,'' McEwan said. ``Fortuitously, those lower portions of the streams are only migration routes. The fish do everything they need to do at the upper reaches.''

Along with pressure to tear down the dam, there have been efforts to preserve it.

Ron Rindge is on a committee interested in having the dam preserved as a historical site. His grandmother, May K. Rindge, built the dam in 1924 to supply water to the agricultural flat lands of Malibu.

He opposes using taxpayer money to remove the dam.

``The economics are absurd. There's no proof that the trout would survive,'' Rindge said.

Some efforts already have been made to restore steelhead migration routes in the Santa Clara River, where a fish ladder has been installed at a major diversion project operated by the United Water Conservation District.

Fish and Game biologist Maurice Cardenas said only one adult steelhead per year for the last three years has been seen using the ladder. But juvenile fish heading from the river to the sea have averaged about 100 to 200 a year.

The Freeman Diversion 12 miles upstream of the river estuary channels water used to replenish underground aquifers.

Problems are more complex on the Ventura River, where the steelhead's access is impeded both by the Robles Diversion and Matilija dams. Biologists hope to install a fish passage at the Robles diversion and one day remove Matilija dam.

Rindge Dam, located about 2.5 miles upstream from the ocean, was filled with sediment by 1967, making removal more costly, Edmondson said.

If the dam were removed, it would give steelhead access to about five miles of additional habitat that would help triple the population of fish, the Department of Fish and Game estimates.

But Rindge said the dam's removal would give the steelhead only an additional 200 to 300 yards of unfettered stream, since a steep waterfall above the dam precludes farther fish migration.

Although state funding was allocated to build a fish lock to move fish over a barrier like the dam, the department abandoned the idea because its maintenance and operation would have been too complex.

Now, the solution seems to lie in removing the dam, McEwan said. The structure is owned by the state Department of Parks and Recreation.