A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019
Hatcheries: ‘Some of these facilities are approaching 60 or 70 years old’
Continued from Page A1
For the past few budget cycles , Mitch-
ell Act funding has remained constant. This
time , the number could jump from $16 mil-
lion up to $25 million going out the door to
operators throughout the Columbia basin,
according to James Dixon, of the s ustain-
able fi sheries d ivision at National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration .
“If the increase that’s been requested
sticks, it could be a $4 (million) to $9 mil-
lion increase, depending on how C ongress
actually specifi es what they mean by $25
million to Mitchell,” he said. “Either way,
this would be a signifi cant, multiple-million
dollar increase.”
Historically, the Mitchell Act funded
the construction of hatcheries, such as Big
Creek. Now, the vast majority of Mitch-
ell Act funding goes to production, which
leaves little for maintenance.
“Some of these facilities are approach-
ing 60 or 70 years old, and while there’s
been replacement and maintenance enough
to keep the lights on, keep the water fl ow-
ing and keep the fi sh in the ponds, that’s not
optimum in a lot of cases,” Dixon said. “Big
portions of the facilities are due either for
complete renovations or rebuilds.”
“This isn’t the kind of money that can
do that,” he clarifi ed. “I think adequately
addressing the maintenance issues would
take years of successive, large additional
funding.”
Basically, he said, hatcheries have been
perpetually underfunded.
Photos by Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
Ross McDorman is a senior fi sh and wildlife technician at the Big Creek Hatchery.
“The concrete is really important. I t’s
really the structure that we use to raise fi sh,”
Scott Patterson, the fi sh p ropagation m an-
ager at the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife said. “It’s kind of like the gas to the
car. I f you don’t have any gas, you might
have a nice car but it doesn’t go anywhere.”
Small details
On the ground at Big Creek, one of the
two hatcheries funded by the Mitchell Act in
Clatsop County, the season is off to a strong
start. Coho and Chinook salmon have come
back up the ladder, thousands of new salmon
eggs are incubated every day and they’re on
track to meet their production goals. To the
unassuming eye, the hatchery seems to run
smoothly.
But small details cause big problems for
fi sh production.
Large, concrete ponds hold millions of
salmon on the property, and that concrete
has been corroded by decades of use.
“The pond walls, there’s no slurry on the
top,” Ross McD orman, a senior fi sh and
wildlife technician at Big Creek, said. “It’s
all aggregate that’s exposed now.”
Securing funding to begin repairing the
concrete pools is necessary, McD orman
said. When the fi sh enter the ponds, they’re
roughly a centimeter long, or shorter, which
means even the smallest cracks in the con-
crete can cause problems.
“Any crack that’s this big or bigger,” he
said, holding his fi ngers about a centime-
Money needed
But before the improvements can be seri-
ously considered, the funding has to come.
The hatcheries have received the same
amount of funding for the past fi ve years,
which means there isn’t enough money
for everything that needs to be addressed,
according to Patterson.
“It’s really hard to maintain the pro-
gram’s production, staff, maintenance at
the level it needs to be,” he said. “If we still
operate in the same level for the next couple
budget cycles, we’d probably be looking at
reduced production to our fi sh.”
The situation is similar at Klaskanine,
another Clatsop hatchery funded by the
Mitchell Act .
“Right now, we’re just in a place where
our federal budget is not really adequate, ”
Patterson said.
After salmon eggs are spawned, they are released into larger ponds outdoors to grow. Over
the course of decades, the concrete walls and fl ooring has corroded.
ter apart, “we could potentially lose fi sh in.
Hundreds of fi sh could potentially be lost to
that crack.”
Some of the concrete was coated about
fi ve years ago, but there’s more work to be
done.
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6 pm Appetizers • 6:30 pm Dinner • 7 pm Program
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He earned a B.A. in Physics from Harvard Uni-
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Philip Mote, Oregon State Climatologist
COLUMBIAFORUM 2018-19
RSVP by Friday, October 25, 2019
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Call 503-325-4955 or email
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