Farmers fight for the right to dam Frenchman’s Creek

Farmers are fighting a California Department of Fish and Game demand that they remove dams from the Frenchman’s Creek watershed. The Department says that seasonal dams prevent steelhead smolts from reaching the ocean. Farmers have won a temporary restraining order, according to the County Times.

Jim Green, head of the Frenchman’s Creek Water District, said he and the other plaintiffs in the suit had no idea they needed a special permit to operate the dam in his backyard until the Department of Fish and Game told them to remove it in 2004. The landowners, who collectively farm 140 acres of flowers, all received a permit from the State Water Resources Control Board to extract a certain amount of water from the creek.

When the Department of Fish and Game intervened, residents removed the 71/2-foot dam and tried to use wells and other alternative water sources to grow their flowers.

Those sources are now drying up, said Green, who has let 40 percent of his own fields lie fallow for lack of water to cultivate them.