Santa Rosa officials show off rehabilitated Colgan Creek

Santa Rosa officials celebrated the completion of the first phase of the ambitious restoration of Colgan Creek on Thursday with a tour of the newly widened waterway.

The majority of work on the half-mile section of creek just east of Elsie Allen High School wrapped up last fall, with workers widening and reshaping the channel to increase its flood capacity, restore a more natural course and improve the riparian habitat.

The channel will now be able to handle a 100-year-flood instead of the 25-year event for which it was designed, city environmental specialist Sean McNeil explained to dozens of people who turned out for the event.

Wildlife already is returning to the creek. Western pond turtles were discovered in the area soon after major work completed last fall, said Steve Brady, a city’s environmental specialist. And a green heron was spotted Thursday hunting near one of the few remaining pools that haven’t yet dried up this summer.

Colgan Creek long has run dry in the summer, and the project won’t change that.

“This is not going to be a steelhead creek,” McNeil said.

But it will create a more natural environment for a variety of wildlife, including winter habitat for fish species moving up from the Laguna de Santa Rosa, he said.

The city initiated the project in the city’s southwest area because it was one of the few areas of the city where significant undeveloped land existed alongside the creek, which has historically been one of the city’s hottest, most polluted waterways.

The city purchased some of that adjacent pasture land before it could be developed and will use it to widen the channel in a way that mimics the way creeks naturally meander. The straight, flat-bottomed channel now is spotted with tree trunks and boulders, which push the creek along a more curvaceous path. Native plants like willows have replaced the blackberry bushes that once choked the waterway.

The next phase of the 1.3-mile-long, $16 million project begins in 2017.

One of the attendees was Polly Escovedo, manager of grants at the California Natural Resources Agency, which dedicated $1 million to the project. She said she was impressed with the many goals the project met, including environmental, flood control and public access.

“They didn’t just come in a do a lot of superficial planting,” Escovedo said. “They really restored it to its natural function.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum?@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.