The Daily World, 4-2-98
NEAR THE WISHKAH RIVER Terry Baltzell lifts up the mesh screen atop the fish tank and looks down in disgust at the chocolatey brown water below.
"This water was crystal clear this morning," said the facility manager of the Long Live the Kings fish hatchery.
The tank and 11 others like it teem with 100,000 coho and chinook salmon that Baltzell believes have been put in danger by the city of Aberdeen.
During maintenance work on the Malinowski Dam Wednesday morning, city workers drained the lake behind it. That released sediment that had built up after the dam's failure a year ago.
Baltzell is upset that the work was done during one of the most sensitive times for young salmon. But he's also angry that he was given only a half-hour's notice.
"I can see nature screwing us over, but not this," he said. "This is man-made."
Public Works Director Jim Robertson said Wednesday night that the work had to be done. "I don't know that the city is obligated to tell the whole world when I'm trying to repair a city utility," he said.
On the advice of his insurance carrier, Robertson had no further comment this morning.
The problems began for the private non-profit fish hatchery around 8 a.m. when Baltzell received a phone call from workers at the dam.
"They said the water coming down here would be so dirty that I would need to shut down," he said. The hatchery, however, does not have any other source for water.
Without water, the fish die. But with the muddy water, many of the fish will die anyway, Baltzell said. "This is a major catastrophe."
Baltzell, who has managed the private non-profit hatchery for 23 years, said the sediment release came at a particularly bad time.
Along with the coho and chinook fry, about 80,000 chum smolt that are almost ready to begin their migration to the ocean will be affected.
In addition, about a hundred wild steelhead are spawning in the river right now.
The fry are extremely sensitive to the muddy water, and Baltzell likely will have to shovel silt out of the fish tanks once it has settled.
But the other fish will also have problems. Clay particles suspended in the river water can cling to the smolts' gills, eventually suffocating them.
And the salmon eggs that are laid in gravel on the river bed will lose their source of oxygen as the muddy water settles, according to the hatchery manager.
"If they don't have that (oxygen), they'll just smother," Baltzell said. "it's just like sealing up grave."
Some of the fish will be able to find sanctuary in clean-flowing man-made streams that the hatchery maintains, Baltzell said.
But he said he found only about 200 to 300 fry - the number produced by just one pair of adult fish - in one stream.
Troubles began at the Malinowski Dam more than a year ago.
After two 100-year storms in March of 1997, an old log dam at the site-failed, releasing years of sediment into the lake behind the Malinowski Dam.
Aberdeen and Cosmopolis residents were advised to boil their water as the muddied water, which contains microscopic parasites, worked its way into the city's water supply.
Problems with the dam continued throughout the year, though the city issued only one other boil advisor.
The city has had trouble finding a replacement for a broken sluice gate at the dam, city records show.
During repairs on the gate last year, a drill bit became stuck in the concrete and broke off. City staff decided to lower the lake level Wednesday to retrieve the bit and fix the gate, city records show.
As the water drained from behind the dam, it took with it some of the stirred-up sediment.
However, Robertson noted in a report on the incident, the water was not muddied more that it has been because of high rainfall in the past year.
But Baltzell said the river does not usually receive this much rain in April during the peak of spawning season.
This is not the first time that the fish hatchery, which opened in 1973, has had problems.
In recent years, salmon in the Wishkah river - both wild and hatchery-produced - have had a string of bad luck.
Two years ago, hatchery workers counted 125 steelhead returning to the river to spawn. Last year they found 13. This year, there were none.
"That has never happened in 23 years at this facility," Baltzell said.
Late-returning coho runs are also down.
But last year's problems at the Malinowski dam were particularly harsh. Baltzell said he had to shovel six industrial wheelbarrows full of silt out of each of the 12 fish rearing tanks.
"It was a catastrophe," he said. He estimates the hatchery lost more than 30,000 fish due to muddy water.
He praised the city's work up until Wednesday. After meeting with state officials, he said the city worked on rehabilitating eroding banks on streams leading to the Malinowski dam.
But he said Wednesday's problems were serious - not just for the hatchery fish.
"You cannot put a dollar figure on wild steelhead," he said.
If the fish decline any further the hatchery manager warned, the are may face endangered listings on salmon.
"If it ever comes to that, it's going to affect everybody in the city of Aberdeen," Baltzell said. "We can't afford to have this kind of thing take place."
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