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Funds will give hatchery new life
Jim Grieve, temporary foreman at a state fish hatchery in Butte Falls, stands in an abandoned rearing pond that will be resealed and partitioned into four ponds as part of a nearly $600,000 renovation project at the 86-year-old hatchery. Butte Falls site dodges closure after state OKs $575,350 for repairs By MARK FREEMAN BUTTE FALLS - At 86 years old, the state-run fish hatchery nestled here among a grove of old-growth firs looks and acts its age. The antiquated water intake doesn't meet federal fish-protection standards. The abandoned concrete ponds stand half-crumpled like ruins of a culture long gone, and a 24-inch water pipe to the hatching house is so brittle a cold stare could rupture it. "The water pipe is so rusted out that the last time they welded it, it took three days to get it to hold," says Paul Johnson, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife engineer. But much of the dust and rust will get knocked off the Butte Falls Hatchery next summer under a nearly $600,000 renovation project meant to get the facility out of the 20th century and into the new millennium. The ODFW will improve and modernize Oregon's third-oldest working fish hatchery, and possibly expand its fish production, under newly funded plans for a facility that just last spring was tapped for retirement. Work includes redesigning a fish screen at the hatchery's water-intake line to meet federal guidelines, and a $114,350 project to replace the rusty water line to the hatch house. Almost $250,000 will be spent rebuilding and resealing one of the large, abandoned concrete ponds and partitioning it off into four smaller ponds. A $90,000 alarm system for monitoring the water supply, $50,000 for engineering a new water-treatment system for cleaning fish effluent and a $24,000 refurbishing of two other fish ponds rounds out the work, which is expected to be done by next fall. "It won't bring it up to a new hatchery standard," Johnson says, "but it will make it more reliable and more useful." The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission recently approved $575,350 from the state's Fish Restoration and Enhancement Board for the project. "I don't know if we got a pot of gold," says Jim Grieve, the temporary foreman who has run the hatchery this year, "but it's enough to keep it going." The ODFW also hired Devan Garlock, the manager of its Klamath hatchery, to be the new Butte Falls manager. That's a heavy infusion of money and commitment for a facility that ODFW managers scheduled for closing twice in the past two years. But lobbying by Butte Falls residents and from state Rep. Susan Morgan helped get the hatchery funded last summer. Since it was to remain open, the facility needed repairs. "Now, we have no intention to see it close," says John Thiebes, the ODFW's acting Rogue watershed district manager. "It's going to be a fully operational hatchery. "We want to preserve the historic flavor of the hatchery and really involve the community in it," Thiebes says. The hatchery is used to rear fall chinook and coho salmon bound for the Coos and Coquille rivers of southwestern Oregon, along with rainbow trout fingerlings stocked in Hyatt and Howard Prairie lakes in Jackson County and Galesville Reservoir in Douglas County. In all, about 700,000 fish are spawned in other state-run hatcheries and sent to Butte Falls to be reared on the bottle-quality water of Big Butte Creek before they are trucked away and released. Once the refurbishing is done, the hatchery will gain enough pond space again to raise legal-sized rainbow trout as well, Grieve says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com |
