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Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery rehab to be costly and lengthy

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 24, 2008 at 6:03 am

From the Inyo Register:

It will take some time – perhaps years – but the California Department of Fish and Game will be bringing the historic Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery back on line. That was the news this week as the DFG continues assessing the damage and initiating extensive clean-up efforts at the facility in the wake of last weekend’s flood and mudslide that destroyed much of the hatchery, killed its entire stock of fish and brought operations to a screeching halt.

As flood waters charged down Oak Creek last Saturday, the wall of mud, water and debris flooded out the hatchery’s three raceways and two spawning sheds used to separate fertile trout eggs.
“All of the water intake infrastructure (flowing from both forks of the creek) was completely destroyed,” said Bruce Ivey, vice president of Friends of the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery. “It will be a long time before it is replaced or repaired so the hatchery can get back into service.”

Though the display pond on the east side of the hatchery grounds was unaffected by the floodwaters, the damage to the water intake system at Mt. Whitney stopped the flow of fresh water into that pond. “As a result, all the fish there died,” said Ivey. It is estimated the flooding claimed as many as 2,800 trout at the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery. Luckily the historic main building of the hatchery was unscathed by the mudslide.

The California Conservation Corps (CCC) has dedicated between 20 and 30 crew members to the clean-up effort at the hatchery, the California Department of Corrections has assigned inmate work crews to the task and a six-man crew from the DFG is also on hand helping to clean up and assess the damage.

Though community support has been great, and many residents have come forward to help with the clean-up work at the historic hatchery, “the magnitude of this job is far more than a volunteer effort can handle,” said Ivey, and the state is supplying the manpower to get things back in order at the hatchery.