[env-trinity] Bureau looking for ideas on getting salmon around dams

[Tom Stokely]

Bureau looking for ideas on getting salmon around dams
Damon Arthur/Record Searchlight The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is looking for ideas from the general public on how to get fish past tall dams like Shasta Dam.Posted: Yesterday 6:00 p.m.3 CommentsBy Damon Arthur of the Redding Record SearchlightHave an idea about how to get migrating fish past tall dams like Shasta Dam? The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants to hear about it.And there is a prize, up to $20,000 for the best proposal, according to the bureau.Connie Svoboda, a hydraulic engineer for the bureau in Denver, Colorado, said the competition is only the third time her agency has opened up a problem to anyone in the nation.Typically the agency has sought proposals from engineering and environmental agencies and companies they work with regularly."This is such a great tool, because previously we could only reach out to the communities that we already knew," Svoboda said. "The prize competition, through the Internet, allows you to reach out to the general public."While the bureau wants solutions that apply to all of the tall dams it operates, there is a problem the agency currently faces with Shasta Dam.The bureau and other federal and state fisheries agencies want to re-introduce winter-run chinook salmon to the McCloud and Sacramento rivers upstream of Lake Shasta. The first phase of that effort, expected to begin next year, focuses on the McCloud.Fish ladders and other types of passages around dams are common to get fish swimming upstream past dams and other obstacles, but the bureau wants a solution to get fish past dams when they are going downstream to the ocean.In the first year of the proposed plan, the fish would be hatched at the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Shasta Dam. Once they are about 2 inches long, they would be hauled by truck and released into the river below the dam at McCloud Reservoir.Within a year, the young fish would swim downstream but would be trapped before they swim into Lake Shasta, the bureau's project manager, John Hannon, has said.After the young fish are collected they would be hauled by truck back to the Sacramento River so they could swim out to the ocean.In the second year, they would again release fingerlings and put fertilized eggs in the McCloud . The young fish would again be trapped and collected near the lake. By the third year they would be releasing fingerlings, eggs and adult salmon into the river for spawning, Hannon said.The chinook salmon live in the ocean about three years, and return to fresh water to spawn and die. The bureau wants proposals from the public about the best way to capture the young fish to get them past dams, Svoboda said."For this prize competition, we are interested in collecting the juvenile fish in the reservoir for transport downstream," Svoboda said in a video posted on YouTube."There are challenges for collecting fish in the reservoir. The fish can have a very difficult time finding a single collection point in a very large reservoir. They may never find the collection point or they may be significantly delayed in finding it," she said in the video.There is already a trap at Keswick Dam used to catch adult salmon heading upstream from the ocean. Those fish are taken to the Livingston Stone Fish Hatchery. Hannon said that trap can be used to take adults returning from the ocean past the dam and haul them by truck to the McCloud.In the previous two competitions, the bureau chose proposals submitted from companies and groups they had never worked with before, Svoboda said. She did not know how many dam passage proposals had been submitted because the competition is being managed by a company called InnoCentive.She said proposals should be in the range of three to five pages and include drawings. Proposals don't need to include a testable prototype, she said.The judges, who work with federal agencies, may choose one winner and award the full $20,000 prize, Svoboda said. Both of the earlier competitions also chose more than one proposal, which means the winners split the amount of prize money.There will be at least one $5,000 winner and no winners will receive less than $2,500, according to competition rules.More information about the challenge, which closes May 10, can be found online at http://bit.ly/1oohjL8.
About Damon Arthur
Damon Arthur covers resources, environment and the outdoors for the Record Searchlight and Redding.com.   
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