EPHRATA - Grant County PUD commissioners unanimously approved a contract Monday to build a new $8.5 million sockeye hatchery in Canada.

Grant PUD pays 55 percent of the design and construction costs, for a total of $4.67 million. Chelan County PUD contributes 45 percent toward the remaining balance, or $3.8 million.

The contract meets Grant PUD's sockeye mitigation requirements under the Priest Rapids Salmon and Steelhead Settlement Agreement, said Rita Bjork, a district spokesperson.

The settlement agreement was adopted as a term and condition of Grant PUD's federal license to continue owning and operating its Columbia River dams.

The agreement states Grant PUD must provide hatchery compensations for sockeye salmon, she explained.

The professional services contract for the hatchery is with Okanagan Nation Aquatic Enterprises, which is a subsidiary of Okanagan Nation Alliance, and Chelan PUD.

"The contract has been in the works for two years," Bjork commented. "It was good work by all the people involved."

The work in the agreement meets the district's sockeye mitigation obligations through the release of brood year 2020, she said.

The agreement provides funding for hatchery construction and operations, and monitoring and evaluation, to provide sufficient quantities of small fish to support the sockeye reintroduction program.

The program aims to reestablish sockeye runs up the Columbia and Okanagan rivers in Washington, to Lake Osoyoos and Skaha Lake in British Columbia.

"This experimental reintroduction of sockeye into Skaha Lake provides for the capture of mature adults from the spawning grounds and extraction of eggs," according a Grant PUD memo.

Eggs are fertilized and incubated in a local hatchery, now at Shuswap Hatchery in Lunby, British Columbia, and, upon completion, at the new hatchery in Penticton, British Columbia, according to the memo.

Fry are "out-planted" in the Okanagan River at Penticton, the memo states.

They move downstream and into Skaha Lake.

"This method of reintroduction gives the least amount of risk and offers the greatest opportunities to determine potential interactions between kokanee and sockeye (all life history stages)," according to the PUD.