Cheap dam fix brings ‘Incredible biological benefit'


Upper Columbia River sockeye salmon that have amazed in recent years with record returns to the Okanogan River system now have more room to roam with new access to an area where potentially more fish can rear, and keep those adult returns strong.

#An inexpensive fix made early this summer at the dam controlling Skaha Lake on the Okanagan River in southeastern British Columbia is expected to allow more fish to reach the lake and potentially spawn upstream, and give their young as much as four times the space now available to grow.

#The cost of the fix? About $2,500, according to Chris Fisher, a fisheries biologist with the Colville Confederated Tribes.

#“After years of looking at the outlet of an inactivated fishway at Skaha Lake dam and collectively shaking our heads, yesterday several 4 x 4 non-treated posts were cut, set, and wedged, creating 5 step pools,” Fisher said in a June 10 e-mail to the Bonneville Power Administration’s Joe Peone.

#“At approximately 7 p.m. PST Skaha Lake, as well as Shingle and Ellis Creek became accessible to anadromous salmonids. Cost of project, around $2,500.”

#The project was “financially modest with an incredible biological benefit,” Fisher said earlier this month.

#The Okanagan adult sockeye salmon return has been amazingly numerous over the past six years, with annual counts at Wells Dam totaling at least 130,000 and reaching as high as 326,000 in 2012 and 291,000 in 2010. No other annual count on a record dating back to 1977 exceeded 81,000, according to data posted online by the Fish Passage Center.

#That 2012 record could be in jeopardy. This year through July 14 the sockeye count at Wells totaled 242,578. Daily counts from July 10-14 ranged from 21,000 to 29,000.

#Favorable ocean conditions, increased hatcheries releases and improved juvenile rearing habitat and freshwater migration conditions all can be given credit for the surge. New water management tools first implemented in the Okanagan basin in 2004-2005 have greatly reduced losses of eggs and juvenile fish to drought and flood and scour events, allowing more juveniles to survive and a mostly a naturally producing population to flower.

#Okanagan sockeye swim upstream and downstream through nine major hydro projects. Wells Dam, owned by Douglas County Public Utility District, is the last of nine major hydro projects the fish pass on their way to Lake Osoyoos and beyond to spawn. The Okanagan reservoir is backed up by Zosel Dam, stretches from north-central Washington into British Columbia.

#Wells is located at river mile 515, approximately 30 river miles downstream from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Chief Joseph Dam, and 42 miles upstream from Rocky Reach Dam, owned and operated by Chelan County PUD.

#After clearing Wells, the sockeye turn into the Okanogan and swim an additional 100 miles before they are ready to spawn.

#More fish are on the way. The 2014 count at the lower Columbia’s Bonneville Dam (river mile 146) was at 609,928 through Thursday. It is estimated that about 85 percent of those fish are headed for the Okanagan with most of the balance branching off into the Wenatchee River system in central Washington. More than 2,000 sockeye have taken a right turn in southeast Washington into the Snake River

#“We expect 40,000 fish to show up at the fishway” at the Skaha Dam, said Richard Bussanich, a fishery biologist for the Okanogan Nation Alliance. A count of up to 60,000 sockeye arriving at Skaha would not be surprising, he said.

#The Skaha dam, like McIntyre downriver, was “designed for fish passage but it was never executed,” Bussanich said. In 2009 with the help of $1.4 million in funding from Grant County PUD gates at McIntyre .... http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2...ogical-benefit/