Drifter,

It's true that Cushman has no fish ladder. A ladder would not work for fish passage at that dam because the water surface elevation fluctuates 40 feet or more from late winter to summer. A ladder cannot adjust to that much variation. What TP has done is install a Floating Surface Collector (FSC) very similar to the successful downstream juvenile fish collectors used at Upper and Lower Baker dams. For upstream passage, TP has installed a fish trap at the base of Lower Cushman Dam that uses a tram to raise trapped fish up to a fish sorting facility at the top of the dam. From that point fish are transferred to the new hatchery facility at Potlach (the sockeye hatchery) or the new hatchery facility near Lake Kokanee (the spring Chinook and steelhead hatchery), or they can be released directly into Lake Cushman. It ain't natural, but then there's nothing natural about a river with two dams that are each over 200' high either. Nonetheless, these are effective methods for passing anadromous fish up and downstream in an effort to restore runs that have been extirpated.