USFWS/NATIONAL FISH PASSAGE PROJECT: BODENBURG CREEK, ALASKA

Fish Passage Decision Support System

Fish and Wildlife Management Assistance

Fisheries and Habitat Conservation

Questions or Comments?

BODENBURG CREEK, ALASKA

Completed in 2000

For more information contact
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Regional Fish Passage Coordinator
1101 East Tudor Road
Anchorage, AK 99503

Project Description:

Bodenburg Creek, a tributary of the Knik River is located in the Matanuska - Susitna Valley, the fastest growing area of Alaska. This waterway provides important spawning and rearing habitat for coho and sockeye salmon. The creek is spanned by numerous bridges, a number of which are smaller than the natural active channel width, resulting in increased flow velocities, deep mid-channel scour, and downstream erosion.

Funds have provided to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to replace two bridges that cause the greatest increases in stream velocity, sedimentation, and erosion; Elk Road and Back Acres.


The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Public Works Department crew and contractors install soil wraps with willow brush layers to biostabilize the creek banks adjacent to a newly installed bridge over Bodenburg Creek, an anadromous stream.		Matanuska-Susitna Borough contractors water vegetative mats as the Bodenburg Creek biostabilization project is completed. Watering of willow cuttings and vegetative mats will continue as needed.

Matanuska-Susitna Borough contractors install silt fencing to protect instream aquatic habitat prior to beginning construction of the bank biostabilization project along the newly constructed bridge over Bodenburg Creek.

Project Outcome:	The bridges were replaced December 2001, eliminating constriction of the active channel and thus reducing erosion and improving anadromous fish habitat.

Partners:

USFWS-Partners for Fish and Wildlife and Coastal Programs and Matanuska-Susitna Borough.