The Fraser River feeds hundreds of tributary streams in the Lower Mainland, many of which are managed by infrastructure to protect human development and agricultural lands from flooding. However, this flood infrastructure is also impeding wild salmon from accessing important waterways along the Fraser River, and impacts upstream water quality (Seifert and Moore, 2018).

Many of the floodgates and pump stations require updates due to their age and the increased risk of major flooding from sea-level rise (Partridge and Curran, 2017). As such, there is an important opportunity to upgrade to more “Fish-Friendly” infrastructure. Unfortunately, current jurisdictional standards do not always consider fish passage or upstream habitat quality as priority concerns in their plans, and Fish-Friendly infrastructure can be fairly costly, economically.

Therefore, the goal of this project was to determine the top 10 floodgates or pump stations that should be prioritized for municipalities to consider upgrades to “Fish-Friendly” infrastructure. These priority sites would provide the most benefit to salmon habitat, while taking into account their economic cost. The resulting list and map could be presented to municipalities and the provincial government, in order to indicate where they should allocate additional funds for these Fish-Friendly updates.

The analysis was completed through a Multi-criteria evaluation, which took into account various constraints and factors and the expert opinion of Watershed Watch staff and biologists.

The full list of priority infrastructure can be found in the Results and Discussion section. The #1 site was located on the Katzie Slough, which was not surprising since this is a waterway that Watershed Watch has already focused on for their Connected Waters campaign. The #5 site, on the Camp / Hope Slough, is another area that they have done habitat restoration work.

Overall, this project provided a preliminary list and map of infrastructure that Watershed Watch and municipalities should prioritize for upgrades to become more Fish-Friendly. Due to limitations and errors of the available data, there is indication that significant future research would be progressive in creating a more comprehensive and accurate list.