Utah wildlife officials restock Red Butte Creek with Bonneville Cutthroat trout

SALT LAKE CITY — State wildlife officials are betting 3,000 valuable fish that Red Butte Creek is now clean enough to support a healthy ecosystem.

A devastating oil spill killed thousands of fish 17 months ago in parts of the creek that wends its way through Salt Lake City's east side. On Friday, in a milestone for the cleanup effort, the state began restocking the creek with baby Bonneville cutthroat trout — the first time since the spill that the creek has been judged healthy enough for fish.

"It's a waste of our time to throw these precious fish in if they're not going to survive," said Mike Slater, an aquatic biologist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

Chevron's crude oil pipeline broke during a storm in June 2010, apparently when a lightning bolt traveled through a fence post into the ground. Crude oil flowed for hours before residents noticed. The spill wiped out aquatic life on about three miles of the creek stretching from the University of Utah to Liberty Park.

"We feel like we had pretty much a complete kill on both the fish as well as a lot of the macro-invertebrates, the bugs and stuff, that are in the stream the fish are needing to live off," Slater said.

People can still smell oil sometimes, and some neighbors insist the waterway remains unhealthy. But state officials believe the cleanup effort by Chevron has made great strides, determining the water quality is "great."

"They did a great job in cleaning things up," Slater said.

The division hauled in Bonneville cutthroat trout from a state hatchery in Midway. They are tiny, just 3 inches long, and only a few months old. It's expected that many, but not most, will die in the next few months from natural causes. "If you put enough smaller fish in, then you'll have some that will carry on and reproduce and repropogate the stream," said Ted Hallows, supervisor of the DWR's Midway hatchery.

The hope is that most of the fish will ride out the winter and be ready to gobble up bugs in the spring. "Right now, going into the winter, their fats are good and they should survive real well," Hallows said.

The Bonneville cutthroat is Utah's state fish. Petitions have been filed in the past to have it declared a threatened or endangered species, and state wildlife officials have been helping the species make a comeback.

By stocking them in Red Butte Creek, they're essentially betting the creek has made a comeback, too. The key issue is whether enough insects have returned to support a healthy fish population.

"We've been watching that," Slater said. "And that's one of the things we've been waiting for. We wanted to make sure, hey, there's enough bugs in here, these fish will survive."

Slater and Hallows planted the baby trout in five locations. In all, they put in about 3,000 fish — equal to the estimated death toll from the oil spill.

They plan to add another 3,000 trout next year and they expect to monitor the biology of the creek for at least five more years.

E-mail: hollenhorst@desnews.com