Sean C. Morgan
Construction of a new fish passage facility at Foster Dam is about to begin and, though it will result in closure of parts of Andrew J. Wiley Park, it is not expected to permanently cut off the existing access to the South Santiam shoreline at the Park, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman.
Officials also expect the new system to significantly improve the survival rate of fish trapped below the dam because it will enable fish to be moved over the dam or “recycled” downriver with much less human contact.
The fish passage will incorporate a large new facility in the park on the south bank of the South Santiam.
The Corps has awarded an $18.6 million construction contract to the Natt McDougall Company of Tualatin. McDougall will start moving equipment to the site and begin preparatory work within the next month. Construction will continue through early 2014.
In addition to closures of parts of the park, the project will result in traffic controls on Foster Dam Road this fall.
The east end of the park will be permanently removed from public use to accommodate the new facility, said spokesman Scott Clemans, but he said he understands that it will not permanently close the shoreline where people normally fish, on both sides of the mouth of Wiley Creek. Fishermen will still be able to get as far as the existing no fishing signs.
Brett Boyd, manager of the South Santiam Fish Hatchery, said the new facility will improve the handling of native fish, which, since the hatchery was built in 1968 and until recently, have been enclosed in a bell at the base of the dam’s face, then elevated and released over the dam into the Middle Fork of the Santiam River.
Before the wild fish are separated and released, they congregate with hatchery fish below the dam. All the fish are trapped and treated to ward off disease if they are slated to go on upriver or serve as hatchery broodstock, then separated and sent upriver, to the hatchery, or “recycled” downriver to give fishermen another shot at catching them. That system has created some problems.
“They found out that when they use the bell, the fish fall back over the dam and get injured,” Boyd said. “When you only have one spot to put fish, you have to handle certain groups of fish multiple times until you mine out hatchery fish. We feel that the current trap is inefficient and hard on the fish. It’s harder for us to get fish through the project.”
More recently, the fish are collected at the base of the dam and sorted by hand into trucks and then transported up or downstream.
The Corps experimented earlier this year with downstream passage for smolts, Clemans said. Data are not available yet, but anecdotal evidence from the experiments suggests that the smolts survive best through a low-water weir in the spillway.
The Corps tested passage over the spillway and through the power plant turbines.
The question the other direction is how to get them up river when they return a few years later, Clemans said. “That’s what this facility is designed to allow us to do.”
It allows a less stressful hands-free mechanism to move fish upstream, he said. Instead of getting the fish in tanks and then sorting them by hand, fish will swim up the ladder into a series of flumes that operators can divert to different pools.
As fish move through the system, the operators can see whether each fish is a salmon or steelhead, wild or hatchery and direct them to the proper pool. Wild fish will be transported upstream by truck, while hatchery fish may be sent downstream for fishermen, taken to the hatchery for spawning, sold for food, used as fertilizer or taken for other purposes.
“We do all of this without having to physically handle them, without having to take them out of the water,” Clemans said. The fish end up in raised tanks that are poured into waiting trucks.
Under the current arrangement, fish congregate below the dam, increasing their risk of disease in close proximity to one another, Boyd said.
“The main driving force of this whole thing is to try to improve these facilities for the benefit of introducing wild stock, so we can efficiently deal with hatchery fish and mine wild fish out of that population,” Boyd said. “ We hope this results in less disease and less injuries.”
The Corps selected the site because it has the largest amount of clear space available and is already Corps property, Clemans said.
“We will also temporarily close other parts of the park for workers to use as a staging area, but we anticipate keeping at least some sections of the park open for public use throughout construction,” said Tami Schroeder, Willamette Valley Project park manager.
Some short-term closures of the boat ramp are also likely, Schroeder said, but it will remain open as much as possible, particularly during fishing seasons.
Schroeder also warned that heavy equipment and vehicles will regularly enter and exit the site, possibly resulting in short-term traffic delays. Flaggers may be on site during heavy traffic periods.
A small amount of construction in the forebay, the water intake for turbines in the dam, is also required, so traffic control may be implemented at times on Foster Dam Road.
Upgrading this facility, along with others, is one of the measures called for in the National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2008 biological opinion, which addresses protection of endangered Upper Willamette Basin spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead.
The new facility will allow hands-free collection, sorting and transportation of wild fish above the dam to allow them to spawn naturally.
The existing fish ladder will be used up to Pool 17, where a new transport channel will take fish to a processing facility. The system includes a false weir in which fish will jump onto a flume that will drain most of the water away from them as they enter an anesthetic tank. Broodstock and fish that will be donated to the Food Bank will be held in short-term ponds until they can be processed into those channels.
Boyd said the new system is expeected to make the process of moving fish up the river and processing hatchery steelhead and salmon “a lot more efficient and easier on us.”
Boyd said he was able to help design the new system – “a very interesting process.”
“A lot of stuff we were doing manually with a dip net and two arms will be done more efficiently,” he said. “We won’t have to lift fish. We will be able to slide fish around on a table. I think no matter how it turns out, it’s better than what we’ve got.”
He said he doesn’t believe favorite fishing holes below Camp Koinonia on the north bank, and near the mouth of Wiley Creek on the south, will be affected by the new construction, though he said the numbers of fish in some of the holes that “rely on the dam backing fish up” might not have as many fish in them.
“All in all, it will be better for the general population,” he said.
Closure schedules are not set yet, Clemans said, but information will be available through the press and via Facebook, Twitter and the Portland District website.
Clemans does not anticipate any closures on Foster Dam Road on Aug. 29, when a railroad repair crew will close Pleasant Valley Road, which should allow the road to function as an alternate route across the South Santiam that day.
The project will most likely require only single lane closures on Foster Dam Road, he said.