Pump failure kills salmon
From 200,000 to 300,000 young Chinook salmon died Wednesday night because of a pump failure at an auxiliary Feather River Fish Hatchery facility used to house fish moved there because of the February Oroville Dam spillway crisis.
The Thermalito facility, nine miles west of the main hatchery in Oroville, is now home to about 5 million fall-run Chinook salmon. The facility holding the rescued salmon was designed to hold 2 million salmon, officials said. Staff noticed the death of salmon at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and discovered a pump supplying the facility with fresh well water had failed overnight, causing a drastic decrease in the water supply of the facility. The salmon died from a low level of oxygen in the water.
Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the facility equipment has been running non-stop since February, when about 5 million salmon were moved from the main Oroville location, due to erosion of the main spillway at the dam.
“This was part of the emergency response from the spillway failure,” Hughan said. “It had never been stressed to this level. It’s designed to hold 2 million fish and we put in about 5 million fish.”
The facility is primarily used to house fish while repairs are being made to the main hatchery, he said.
“It’s unfortunate that there was a faulty wire that killed those fish,” he said. “There are still 4.7 million fish that got saved and are going to be released into the Feather River, so that’s the positive.”
The Feather River Fish Hatchery produces half of the Chinook salmon in the state, he said. Of the 18 million salmon raised at four state hatcheries, the loss is about 1.7 percent of the population.
“It shouldn’t have an impact on the fishing system when those adult fish come back up the Feather River system,” Hughan said.
The remaining four million salmon left at the Oroville facility, off Table Mountain Boulevard, are alive and well, staff said.
Bob Boucke, owner of Johnson’s Bait & Tackle in Yuba City, said despite assurances he worries the evacuation and recent death of salmon will impact his business in three years, when they return to spawn.
“It really sucks we’re having so much trouble this year; it’s unbelievable,” Boucke said. “It’s really a rough thing because in three years we may have a rough salmon run.”
He said his business primarily relies on revenue generated from anglers catching striped bass and Chinook salmon.
“All the other fishing combined doesn’t equal those two,” he said. “We need to get the salmon population back up."
Hughan said DFW was conscious of the concerns of Boucke and others in responding to failures of both the main and emergency spillways at Oroville Dam.
“We made a terrific and heroic effort to move as many fish as we could,” he said. “It was a tremendous effort to save 5 million fish.”
The salmon will be released into the Feather River beginning next week, according to a DFW statement. Salmon release will continue for about a month as the fish grow to the appropriate size. Marysville office, 1530 Ellis Lake Drive Business hours: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
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