Well, I called it.

After approximately $600,000 of your tax dollars, between two and three million smolts were placed in the net pens. Then, they started dying by the thousands every day! It seems the smolts had a disease from the supplying hatchery and had to be gathered up in emergency fashion, then dumped down stream of the Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery to either make it to the ocean, or become duck food. The sum total of days in the net pens was less than two weeks. Funny that has not made the papers....
The whole endeavor was a major failure, not to mention it may have introduced a disease into the supply water of the Cowlitz Salmon and Trout Hatcheries.
If the state allows rivers to be damed up, they sure as heck can develop upstream habitat!

Develop Habitat, not Net Pens!