Two dams sit at the top of San Leandro Creek, where water flows down from the headwaters miles away into the rolling hills and city streets of San Leandro and East Oakland. The waters trapped in these dams comprise the Upper San Leandro Reservoir and Lake Chabot, and they have a storied past. Deaths, floods, and the messes left behind by urbanization mar the area’s history.
Those who care for this creek today are mindful of that history as they work to repair and renew it in hopes of a cleaner, sweeter future.
Today, the dams keep the headwaters of the San Leandro Creek watershed at bay—waters that once broke free to create Arrowhead Marsh—and serve as well-loved recreation spots for East Bay residents. Past these dams, the creek flows mostly freely and uniquely entirely uncovered through the area until it meets the San Francisco Bay water’s edge.
series: Exploring Oakland’s creeks, from the hills to the Bay
The vast majority of the urban streams that run through the East Bay have been heavily channelized, culverted, and diverted away from their natural path. San Leandro Creek is one of three urban streams left uncovered in the East Bay, along with Alameda Creek and Wildcat Creek.
Beautiful rainbow trout, scampering river otters, and vital native plants once filled the creek’s waters. However, these species now face years of urbanization, pollution, and invasion that have made the waters less hospitable. Community members and groups like Friends of San Leandro Creek are trying to bring the natural flora and fauna back to the watershed and make the creek more accessible to the human residents of the East Bay.
Chabot Dam
Anthony Chabot, often referred to as the “Water King,” was one of the first businessmen to establish a water company for the East Bay’s growing population in the 1800s. Chabot was the founder of the Contra Costa Water Company, the original water municipality for the area.
Chabot, originally from Quebec, Canada, came to the area with a history in the gold mining industry. He pioneered a process of gold mining called hydraulic mining, a highly destructive form of mining that involves high-pressure water cannons used to break off gold from mineral deposits. In 1866, he aimed this technology at municipal waters.
In 1875, Chabot started construction on what would become the Lake Chabot Dam, originally called the San Leandro Reservoir. While Chabot utilized hydraulic mining techniques to carve out the basin’s main shape, Chinese immigrants did most of the most difficult work. Many came to California in the 1840s with the hopes of finding gold in the California hills.
After the “gold fever” ended, many Chinese immigrants began working as laborers or on railroad construction crews, and even more were later excluded from the job market by the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Around 800 Chinese laborers are believed to have worked and lived at a nearby camp during the construction of the Lake Chabot Dam.
In 1979, researchers from California State University, Hayward, found around 60,000 artifacts from the former camp site. The archaeologists who found the site named it Yema-Po, meaning “Wild-Horse Slope,” to acknowledge one of the many roles these men played in the dam’s construction—laborers would often run horses across the dam to compact the soil.
On Sept. 16, 1889, three laborers, Ah Bing, Kim Yuen, Toy Sing, and Lock Sing, were killed in a dynamite explosion during the construction of a canal outside a spillway tunnel, a fate unfortunately common for such workers at the time. A memorial dedicated to these men and others who died there now sits at the former location of the laborer camp.
This tragedy was not the only accident at the dam site. It is theorized that Arrowhead Marsh, one of the remaining marshlands in the East Bay, was created when part of the partially built dam broke in the early construction of the dam. A severe storm sent an onslaught of rain that washed away the partial dam, sending 21,000 cubic yards of soil and silt down the creek. Despite its origins, Arrowhead Marsh serves as a key marshland ecosystem and is now part of Martin King Jr. Regional Shoreline.
The dam also cut off many of the creek’s original fish inhabitants’ ability to run freely from the headwaters of the creek to the bay. Getting those fish back to the creek, even if they can’t swim as freely as they once could, is one of the main goals of the local stewardship organization, Friends of San Leandro Creek.
San Leandro Creek today
Michael Gregory, the President of Friends of San Leandro Creek, loves the top of the creek. A former City of San Leandro City Council member, Gregory can often be seen out at Chabot Park with his dog, Baci, tromping along the creekside where a small Friends of San Leandro Creek work site sits along the creek banks.
Gregory grew up with the outdoors as his second home. He loved spending time outdoors and being directly engaged with the environment, especially the creeks.
“It’s just natural,” said Gregory. “It’s confidence-building. It’s a gift to live like that.”
After bouncing around a few jobs—including a short stint selling yachts—- Gregory spent around 16 years running a blood bank for the Red Cross in Oakland. In 2011, while working there, he was recruited by Robin Freeman, a professor emeritus at Lake Merritt College, and Doug Siden, a former board member for the East Bay Regional Park District, to take over the Friends of San Leandro Creek organization. Gregory accepted and later hired Susan Levenson to take on the role of the watershed coordinator.
Friends of San Leandro Creek has always been a small operation. In comparison with other “friends” organizations that similarly devote themselves to parks and waterways across the country, its scope is relatively small. However, the group has worked hard to do what it can for this vital watershed. For Gregory, his dedication to the work has mainly been about two things: bringing the native animals back to the watershed and educating young people to become stewards of the creek.
Before the creation of the Lake Chabot Dam, the San Leandro Creek watershed had a thriving population of steelhead rainbow trout. It has historically also been the home to river otters. However, being cut off from the headwaters, as well as disruption by erosion, pollution, and urbanization, has affected the fish’s ability to thrive in the creek.
Below the lush hills of San Leandro, the waters of the San Leandro Creek face similar challenges to many urban streams. While it runs mostly naturally, it does still wind through the city landscapes of San Leandro and Oakland.
Over the years, studies have been conducted by the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program to examine water quality in the creek. Both organizations identified pollutants and contaminants of serious concern.
The report released by the control board in 2007 found that out of several major watersheds tested, San Leandro Creek had notable sediment toxicity in the mouth of the creek that was highly toxic to marine crustaceans and harmful to invertebrate reproduction. The creek also faces issues with erosion, jurisdictional fights, and invasive species. Eucalyptus trees have historically caused issues for the watershed due to years of overgrowth and tree mortality and recently caused a significant problem when one such tree fell on a pedestrian creek bridge.
Since these findings, Friends of San Leandro Creek and others have been working to clean up the creek. Gregory and his team host clean-up days, invasive plant removal projects, and educational programs for school-aged children. They also work with the City of San Leandro, the Alameda County-Wide Clean Water Program, the Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, and others to raise awareness amongst the community about watershed health and protection.
In 2017, the Alameda County Flood Control District, along with several key local partners, including the city of Oakland, worked together to create the San Leandro Creek Trail Master Plan Study. The plan resulted in a proposed greenway and creek restoration opportunities for community members across San Leandro and Oakland to have access to recreational areas while also improving the health of the stream and surrounding ecosystems.
Two key areas identified in the plan are a stretch of the creek that runs between Hegenberger Road to the Bay and Hegenberger Road and 98th Avenue. A new project called the San Leandro Creek Trail aims to help green that area and provide better access to the creek for neighboring residents.
Freeman has been a close partner on this project and has seen it as a key project to allow folks better access to the creek.
“There’s no access to open space,” said Freeman. “They put all these physical barriers between the neighborhoods that should be able to just walk out to the bay and have a nice trail and green space and have all the mental health benefits that come with that.”
The project received initial funding several years ago and is slated to begin construction this year. Freeman says local workers will be hired to design the 14 interpretive signs along the trail. The trail will also feature 325 newly planted trees, trail benches, exercise equipment, and two pedestrian bridges to help with safe crossing.
Mentoring future stewards and the return of the river otters
While Freeman and other stakeholders work on the lower portions of the watershed, Gregory and Levenson focus much of their attention on the top.
Gregory has implemented an invasive plant removal site at Chabot Park, which sits just below the Chabot Dam. Throughout the year, Levenson hosts field trips and educational events that help bring kids to the top of the watershed and learn about the creek as a vital resource. Levenson and Gregory say kids are the key to the creek’s long-term success.
“It’s the most important thing that we can be doing—making future stewards,” said Levenson. “The world is so wonky right now. We’ve got climate change, we don’t have a lot to hand off to our kids. I don’t think that many people are good models of that stewardship. And so teaching kids when they’re young, and showing them and putting their hands on stuff, doing activities, going to the creek—that’s the way to their hearts.”
Levenson said that she emphasizes to the kids that the creek is theirs. She has a curriculum for a variety of school-aged children and often hosts field trips that take kids to the top of the watershed and learn about the cultural, ecological, and current state of the watershed through activities and games. She also teaches environmental education to Chabot Summer Camp campers. Levenson dons a rainbow trout costume during camp activities and shares her watershed knowledge.
While there is still much work to be done on the watershed, Levenson and Gregory do what they can to help foster a healthier future for San Leandro Creek. And in recent years they have seen their work pay off.
A long-running joke amongst Gregory and his colleagues was that he’d quit running the organization once the river was healthy enough to attract river otters. Five years ago, it happened.
According to Gregory, a neighbor had illegally added some koi fish into the river. The neighbor allegedly received a fine from Fish and Wildlife and was ordered to remove the fish. Before he was given a chance, another neighbor spotted three of four otters feasting on the koi and some local carp fish.
“Somehow, word got out to the river otter community that there was a whole meal there,” said Gregory.
Gregory said the otters left the fish carcasses in neat little piles. More have since been spotted at the top of the watershed.
While this was a huge win for the team, Gregory did not, in fact, retire. According to him and Levenson, there is still much work to be done. While Gregory’s goal was to bring the river otters back, Levenson’s goal was to get the river healthy enough for the fish that have historically run through the creek to be able to freely and healthily run the length of the stream.
“That’s like a lifetime goal to make the creek habitable to all the creatures and the human critters as well,” said Levenson.
