The waters of York Creek began their unabated journey to the Napa River on Sept. 14 for the first time since the latter part of the 1800s, when they were corralled in order to irrigate thirsty vineyards and provide drinking water to the little town of St. Helena about 1.5 miles downstream. Now, after 27 years of starts and stops, a lawsuit brought by state regulators, a court order, a long-running federal fine and the threat of further legal action from environmentalists, the old earthen dam is finally being removed in order to restore a portion of the creek to a more natural state. The goal is to encourage the comeback of its original inhabitants, including a threatened steelhead trout population (Oncorhynchus mykiss) that once spawned in the waters of its shady upper reaches. It's still fairly unique within the state of California to remove any dam," said Ted Frink, chief of the Special Restoration Initiatives branch at the California Department of Water Resources.

"It's always more complicated than anyone can imagine," said Frink, who was involved in one of the project's early planning stages.

For generations, dams have been as much a part of the California landscape as the rivers themselves and are an integral part of the state's byzantine water supply and flood control systems. Over the past 30 years, more than 100 small dams have been demolished in California, but roughly 1,500 still stand, according to a 2019 report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

"The public gets very comfortable with the idea that the dams are going to be there forever," Frink said.

While environmental studies conducted by the city of St. Helena identify 1900 as the year the York Creek dam was built, the late wine historian William Heintz says in his 1991 report "Napa Valley's 'Spring Mountain' Appellation" that it was constructed years earlier. Heintz says it was described in an August 1878 edition of the St. Helena Star newspaper as a 24-foot-high, 225-foot-long dam built by a water company led by John York, Charles Krug, Jacob Beringer, Seneca Ewer and G.K. Gluyas.

"It goes to the very essence of the very beginning of the wine industries," said William McKinnon of Water Audit California, which threatened legal action over the stalled project. When a dam is demolished it's usually due to concerns about earthquake safety or environmental protection or because the dam itself no longer serves its original purpose -- like when a reservoir fills with sediment and loses water storage capacity. The process to remove the York Creek dam started back in the summer of 1992 -- 60 or 70 years after the city stopped using it as a primary water source -- when a crew was doing some routine maintenance work that led to "an accidental discharge of sediment," according to an environmental impact report commissioned by the city.

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