Google announced Thursday that it will donate $600,000 to Trout Unlimited for a culvert-replacement project on a tributary of the Salt River in Apache County, Arizona, aimed at restoring streamflow and reconnecting habitat for Apache trout.
The money will replace three undersized culverts with larger structures in the Paradise Creek area, allowing more water to flow beneath the roadway. The joint announcement from Google and Trout Unlimited also notes downstream benefits for the Salt River, a water source for Apache County and the Phoenix metro area. “This project will help to build on the success of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona Game and Fish Department, and Forest Service efforts to protect and support the recovery of the Apache Trout,” said Nathan Rees, Trout Unlimited’s Arizona state director, in the release.
For Google, the project counts toward a commitment to replenish 120 percent of the freshwater its offices and data centers consume by 2030. A spokesperson told ABC15 the company’s Mesa data center is air-cooled because “the local water source was at high risk of depletion and scarcity.”
Apache trout, Arizona’s state fish, came off the Endangered Species List in September 2024 after more than five decades of recovery work led by the White Mountain Apache Tribe with federal and state partners, a first for a trout or salmon species. Anglers can already fish for them: the Arizona Game and Fish Department stocks Apache trout in several eastern Arizona waters, including the East Fork of the Black River. Rees told the Arizona Daily Independent in July that undersized, perched culverts had blocked trout trying to reach colder water upstream during the hottest months.
The project adds to Trout Unlimited’s other work in the Salt River headwaters. As MidCurrent reported in December, the organization broke ground on the $1.8 million Thompson-Burro Meadow Restoration Project near Alpine, its first major Arizona restoration project, with Microsoft among its funders.
