Early Rearing Building Construction
The Parkdale Fish Hatchery (PFH) was constructed in the late 1990s with the sole purpose of operating as an adult holding, spawning and acclimation facility for Hood River stock spring Chinook salmon and steelhead. Over the past 9 years it has developed into a fish hatchery capable of rearing full-term spring Chinook smolts. The PFH’s fish rearing potential was realized in 2008 when over 40,000 spring Chinook smolts were produced at the facility for the first time. Since then a temporary set up has been used each brood year consisting of three Canadian Troughs that are sheltered by a steel canopy, and a inline water heater system which is housed in a 10’ x 12’ Redi-Shed (Figure 1). During the past five brood years over 100,000 smolts have been reared in the Hood River basin annually.
In March 2017 the HRPP began the process to relocate and expand the PFH’s early rearing infrastructure. The expansion will give the PFH the capacity to increase the spring Chinook salmon smolt release goal from 150,000 to 250,000 annually. It will include a permanent metal pre-fabricated building, six Canadian Troughs and proper trenches and plumbing for the early rearing set-up.
Crestline Construction began work on the project in late June by installing valves on the three hatchery water source pipelines (Figure 2). They not only installed valves to supply water to the new Nursery Building but they also added isolation valves giving PFH staff the ability to shut off water to either the existing 80’ Rearing Raceways or the 40’ Adult Holding Ponds without affecting water delivery to those fish holding ponds. This will be a valuable asset in the event of an emergency situation or when valves may need repair while fish are on station.
After a month of intermission on the project, August 16th marked the beginning of tree removal and excavation at the building site (figure 3). They pushed over six fir trees with an excavator to keep the root wads intact. Those trees will to be used by HRPP Habitat Biologist Blayne Eineichner to create LWD structures in the Hood River basin for habitat restoration. Once tree removal was complete and the site leveled, it was prepared for 4’ concrete footings and a 6” slab with plumbing and drain trenches to support the 30’ x 40’ pre-fabricated steel building (Figure 4). As of December, the building is near completion with all of the fish rearing equipment installed inside the building and electrical and plumbing completed (Figures 5 & 6).
