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Orange County, Calif. — Thousands of gallons of herbicides have been sprayed into flood channels that flow straight into the ocean—right in the same creeks where more than $26 million in taxpayer dollars have already gone toward saving the endangered steelhead trout.
For more than two decades, state and federal agencies have funneled millions into a fish passage project on San Juan and Trabuco creeks. Yet county crews kept spraying the chemicals, including during the steelhead’s spawning season, according to records obtained by local activists.
Save the Fish
In 2003, California state biologists made the first sightings in decades of steelhead trout below the I-5 culvert. By 2004 and 2005, the national nonprofit Trout Unlimited launched efforts to remove barriers at the nearby Metrolink bridge and I-5.
During that time, the California Department of Fish and Game agreed to fund a roughly $1.2 million fish passage, otherwise known as a “fish ladder,” to open an estimated 13 miles of upstream habitat.
But the ladder was never built because of engineering, flood control, bridge stability, and pipeline concerns.
From the mid-2000s to 2017, planning, studies, modeling, and stakeholder negotiations continued under Trout Unlimited, which raised an estimated $2.4 million. By 2013, the U.S. Forest Service began upstream check dam removals as part of broader habitat work in Cleveland National Forest.
The project shifted in 2017 when CalTrout took over leadership from Trout Unlimited because of stalling. CalTrout raised another estimated $2.1 million by 2021. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) granted the project $9.3 million in 2024.
In conjunction with the state, major federal help arrived in late 2024 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) via the bipartisan infrastructure law, which awarded the project $14.6 million.
Chemical Soup
Just a decade after the first spotting of the rare steelhead trout, Orange County Public Works (OCPW) began an active National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and Integrated Pest Management program that includes aquatic herbicide applications in San Juan Creek.
Among the chemicals allowed was glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits.
County officials turned to aquatic herbicides because “mechanical methods” like mowing or hand-pulling were 10 to 25 times more expensive than spraying.
Despite the permit expiring in 2018, the county—through the Orange County Board of Supervisors—continued allowing herbicide spraying.
By 2024, county records show herbicide use, including glyphosate, to eradicate “nuisance weeds” in the flood control channels, including San Juan Creek.
What About the Fish?
But there was an exception to the spraying. According to the Los Angeles Times, OCPW stated that they do not spray during bird nesting season or when endangered Southern California steelhead trout may be swimming upstream to spawn, which is from December to April.
However, records obtained by the local activist group Creek Team OC, which blew the whistle on the spraying, showed that OCPW applied glyphosate in January 2025 across roughly 70 acres of the creek channel.
Just months later, in July 2025, outside the spawning season, records show the county conducted a second major spray using triclopyr and imazapyr, with an estimated 8 tons of the diluted chemicals used in the waterways.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) launched a probe into OCPW in April, announcing there is “currently an investigation into complaints of potential violations of the Fish and Game Code in San Juan Creek.”
“We are performing a compliance review to confirm whether OCPW has met all reporting and monitoring requirements under the Agreement,” CDFW spokesman Cort Klopping told the Voice of OC at the time.
“We are also evaluating what changes may be necessary in OCPW’s new Agreement, which is currently in draft form, to ensure that impacts to fish and wildlife resources and protected species (e.g., CESA listed species) are avoided moving forward,” Klopping added.
The CDFW did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on whether NOAA would be involved in the probe.
In an exclusive interview with the California Courier, Creek Team OC said that when it first raised concerns about spraying during spawning season, it tried to reach out to CalTrout but was dismissed.
“They had no interest in helping us. I asked for their help. They denied it,” Creek Team OC member Brent Linas said.
Bethany Nelms, another member of Creek Team OC, also noted that one of her first approaches was reaching out to the agency, but she quickly realized they had “resistance” to the group’s help.
“That was literally one of my first approaches,” Bethany Nelms told the Courier. “I’m like, ‘I need to tell these people. They must not know this is happening or they’d be really upset.’”
“The resistance and hesitancy was really surprising to see until I realized that they were scared. They didn’t want to lose their funding. They didn’t want to not be able to progress things. They knew the county was going to come back one way or another,” Nelms added.
Endless Money
With more than $24 million in taxpayer dollars already put into the unfinished project, the plan still has no confirmed deadline.
A public post from CalTrout shows that a request for proposals regarding a construction manager was issued in March, with project trackers listing the plans as “current.”
However, with no exact date in sight, the once-under-$2 million project now appears on track to cost an estimated $45 million in taxpayer funds.
During a local town hall meeting with Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, a public official was pressed on the timeline for the fish passage project, but no hard deadline for when plans would be available to the public was announced.
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