The Spaulding Fish Barrier Culvert Correction Project is the first of several restoration projects needed to restore fish production in McDonald Creek. McDonald Creek is a small stream that is a tributary of the Lower Chehalis River in Grays Harbor County. The Spaulding Fish Barrier Culvert Correction Project ranked in the 20th percentile for correction in the Chehalis Basin. It was an undersized shotgun culvert under a private farm access road just south of the town of Elma. The correction was a 40 ft. long by 14 ft. wide modular steel bridge. The culverts were fish barriers to coho and cutthroat trout which have historically used McDonald Creek for spawning and rearing. During high flows the culvert acted as a velocity barrier and at low flows both culverts had an outfall drop at the downstream end. There was a deep plunge pool at the outfall end, roughly 6 feet deep, 20 feet wide and 30 feet long, indicating the severity of the velocity issue. This plunge pool was filled in and the stream bed restored when the barrier culverts were removed and the bridge installed. The Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force and the Grays Harbor Stream Team selected the Spaulding fish barrier on McDonald Creek for correction based on Jarred Figlar-Barnes' watershed assessment. Jarred was a freshman at the Elma High School when he conceived and spear-headed the project and has done much of pre-planning and assessment work to prepare the project for grant applications. The Chehalis Basin Fisheries Task Force engineered and provided technical oversight for the project. With excpetion of the contractor, this entire project was implemented by the volunteer efforts of the Aberdeen Stream Team of which Jarred is a member, the Task Force, and the landowner, all providing volunteer labor and equipment. The project construction started during the 2012 hydraulic window and follow-up work done the following year, the 2013 hydraulic window. The project sign is in place naming the partners, sponsors, contractors and Jarred as the principal contributor. Jarred has completed a watershed assessment which identifies all the failing culverts and aquatic habitat issues needing correction in order to restore McDonald Creek. Most of the recovery efforts will hinge around correcting the numerous barrier culverts upstream of the Spaulding Project. McDonald Creek is a very important low gradient, off-channel refuge for fish during winter flooding and has ample spawning gravel and juvenile rearing areas for both coho and cutthroat trout. If the barriers can be removed the habitat would be capable of recovering the historic fish populations it once had. Based on local knowledge this stream historically produced abundant coho, but due to man-made barriers and environmental degradation these fish all but disappeared. Due to the efforts of the volunteers and with the help of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife the coho have been re-seeded and a small run is being established, which with additional barrier corrections and habitat project will return the coho population to near historic levels at some point.