- Monday, February 5, 6 p.m.
- Heavy rain and rushing waters begin to cause problems at
the Fall Creek hatchery located off Highway 34 west of Alsea.
Silt-laden waters make it difficult to keep the intake
screens clean, and constant water flow is critical for the
hundreds of thousands of fish maintained there. Employees
rotate onto the screen clearing detail on a 24-hour basis,
working always in teams of two because of danger caused by
heavy water and slippery conditions.
- Tuesday, February 6, 3 p.m.
- Even round-the-clock vigilance at Fall Creek is not
enough when the forces of nature conspire against you. In
this case, a log breaks through an intake screen and intake
lines quickly fill with sediment. Luckily, four people
manning the site get the problem handled by 3 a.m. Wednesday.
It appears that everything is under control, for now...
- Tuesday, February 6, 4 p.m.
- Harry Lorz, hatchery supervisor for the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife Northwest Region in
Corvallis, receives a call from the Alsea hatchery. Rising
waters and increased sediment are clogging their intake
screens and hatchery employees cannot keep up their frenetic,
24-hour pace.
- Lorz and technician Neal Rash report to the hatchery and
spend Tuesday night helping to clear screens at the intake.
They arrive back in Corvallis at 5 a.m. Wednesday. Although
the river has cut a new channel around the intake, enough
water is making it through to keep the fish alive. Crews
remain at the hatchery intake around the clock to ensure that
the screens stay clear and adequate water is reaching the
fish.
- Wednesday, February 7, 7 a.m.
- Roaring River hatchery near Scio is experiencing more
than its share of problems. Heavy water has cut a new channel
and only muddy surface water is flowing to the intakes. Silt
is beginning to collect in the ponds, and hatchery workers
anticipate a further loss of water to the ponds. Roaring
River hatchery is home to 220,000 rainbow trout (for release
once they reach legal size), 190,000 steelhead smolts, and
3,000 brood fish. All are threatened because of the
increased debris and potential loss of water.
In the Northwest Regional Office, Harry Lorz and
hatchery liberation coordinator, Kevin Goodson, must quickly
decide how to deal with the threat. Their choices are
limited. Roads are flooding, making it difficult to send
trucks to haul the fish to other hatcheries. Not all of the
fish can be moved, some may have to be released. Priorities
must be established.
Lorz and Goodson agree that the top priority must be the
brood trout. These fish are critical because they produce
80% of the rainbow trout eggs which will be later released
throughout Oregon as legal, catchable fish. They also decide
that if fish must be released, the steelhead smolts will be
the first to go. They will not remain in the river to
compete with resident fish and their numbers can be made up
later with steelhead from the South Santiam Hatchery.
- Wednesday, February 7, 8 a.m.
- Kevin Goodson is on the phone calling Portland for help.
ODFW's Columbia Region offers six liberation trucks to help
haul the Roaring River fish, but road conditions are a
concern and information is hard to come by. The trucksbegin
anyway, the situation is critical. More trucks are
dispatched, one from the Willamette Hatchery and three from
the Southwest Region ODFW Office in Roseburg. Finally,
Goodson is able to contact a Linn County engineer, who knows
the current road conditions, and truck routes to the hatchery
are set.
- Getting the travel information to the trucks, however,
turns out to be easier said than done. All trucks are
equipped with radios but they are unusable in the central
valley. The radio repeater on Mary's Peak has become
waterlogged, disrupting all local transmissions. Coordinating
ten trucks without communication is a feat only a telepath
could conquer. Luckily, a few of the drivers have cellular
phones and information begins to flow, although slowly, out
to the drivers.
- Wednesday, February 7, afternoon
- Thanks to high clearance, seven of the trucks make it to
Roaring River after being re-routed around an unstable bridge
and through a road covered by three feet of water.
All of the brood fish are loaded into four trucks and
part of the legal trout make it on board three other trucks.
Goodson and Lorz must now decide where the trucks should take
the rescued legal trout.
Their first choice is to move the rainbows to the South
Santiam Hatchery, but past problems with the disease IHN at
South Santiam nix that idea. Once exposed to the possibility
of the disease, the fish could not be returned to Roaring
River. After discussing their options with Department fish
pathologists, Goodson and Lorz decide to send the legals to
the Dexter hatchery and the brood fish to the Willamette
hatcheries.
- Meanwhile...
- Back at Fall Creek, that hatchery still had a few
surprises in store. Despite 24-hour clearing efforts,
screens begin to clog. Water flow through the pond and
raceways decreases markedly, causing the level of dissolved
oxygen within the water to drop. Fish cannot survive in the
conditions rapidly evolving at the hatchery. The decision is
simple; release them or lose them. Workers pull the outlet
screens and 1 million coho smolts, which would normally be
released from March to May, swim free into Fall Creek.
Another 40,000 steelhead smolts are released as well.
However, not all the decisions are so simple. While the
released coho and steelhead derive from Alsea River stock,
the hatchery is also raising 50,000 coho from Lake Creek, a
tributary of the Siuslaw River. These cannot be released
into the Alsea without affecting the native fish. Goodson
and Lorz consider trucking them to Lake Creek but road
conditions dictate otherwise. Not only is the road into Lake
Creek closed, but a slide has closed the road to the hatchery
from Highway 34, making transport impossible. The fish stay
where they are.
Other problems are being faced at the Salmon River
hatchery near the coast. Every time the tide goes up water
floods the hatchery ponds and coho from both Salmon River and
Siletz River swim right out of their ponds and away. Because
the Salmon River Hatchery pumps water to its ponds, plugged
screens are less of a threat, but water level is approaching
their pump and hatchery personnel worry that the pump may
burn out.
At the Leaburg Hatchery, intake screens are being worked
24 hours a day. The McKenzie, South Santiam, and Marion
hatcheries are having no major problems thus far.
- Wednesday, February 7, evening
- Three more trucks arrive at the Roaring River hatchery,
but are unable to load fish because of approaching darkness.
Drivers park their trucks and spend the night helping staff
the station. The three trucks sent from the Southwest region
drive as far as Albany, but must spend the night there
because of road closures on I-5.
- Thursday, February 8
- All thirteen trucks are mobilized to move the remaining
rainbows from Roaring River. Every truck was used and a few
trucks made two trips until all of the fish were moved to
Dexter.
- Monday, February 12
- The immediate danger has passed and now the cleanup
begins at hatcheries throughout western Oregon. Alsea, Fall
Creek and Roaring River hatcheries have tons of mud now
lining the concrete raceways and ponds where fish are kept.
They will be digging out for days, perhaps weeks, and mud
slides continue. The 40,000 Lake Creek steelhead kept in the
pond at Fall Creek Hatchery survive.
It is impossible to know what effect the early releases
of smolts will have on fish populations. Only time will
tell.