EPHRATA — The Grant County PUD will not be required to build any new fish hatcheries over the next 10 years. Utility district officials renewed an agreement governing PUD hatchery production for the next decade with other parties involved in salmon and steelhead mitigation.

Tom Dresser, PUD manager of fish and wildlife and water quality, said the agreement governs hatchery production designed to mitigate the effects of hydropower operations on salmon and steelhead populations.

“One of the components of that settlement agreement is related to Grant PUD’s requirements on hatchery production,” Dresser said. “Every 10 years (the signatories) go through what we call a hatchery recalculation process.”

The other entities include NOAA Fisheries, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Utility district officials monitor the fish released as part of the hatchery program, he said.

“We collect monitoring evaluation data on an annual basis,” Dresser said. “And then that information is used every 10 years to determine what our hatchery production will be. Will it need to increase, or will it decrease?

“And as a result of the recent agreement, based on nearly two decades worth of information, our hatchery production stays pretty much the same for the next 10 years. It’s about 8.4 million smolts that we produce on an annual basis,” Dresser said.

Dresser said the goal is to produce what’s called no net impact, to mitigate the results of hydropower operation of Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams on fish populations.

“With no adjustments going forward, that means what we’re doing is not causing harm to wild stocks, based on the information that we’re collecting. It also indicates that we’re mitigating for all the impacts as a result of project operations,” Dresser said.

The 2022 sockeye salmon run set a record, with 665,000 adult sockeye crossing Priest Rapids. The goal of the sockeye program was to reintroduce sockeye to parts of the Columbia River system, Dresser said, throughout the Okanogan River Basin. Since the establishment of a hatchery near Penticton, British Columbia in 2005, with other river management techniques and habitat restoration, sockeye runs have increased, he said.

The success is not just the human effort, however.

“You need nature to do its thing, too,” Dresser said. “What it appears to be is that ocean conditions have been favorable for sockeye. We do a lot of things here in fresh water, a lot of great activities occurring. But also you need a little bit of help from improved ocean conditions.”

The news isn’t as good for Chinook and steelhead populations; the hatchery programs haven’t been as successful, he said.

“There is very limited information at this point in time, where all these juveniles go when they get out in the ocean, where the sockeye (live), where the Chinook (live), where the steelhead (live). It’s a black box, a limited amount of information. There’s definitely something that is influencing and impacting spring Chinook and summer steelhead populations. And I think it’s being driven by ocean conditions,” he said.

The agreement does include provisions for review and possible changes if any of the parties involved think adjustment is necessary.

“If we do see something that needs to be improved, we can make adjustments on an annual basis,” Dresser said.

Unless those adjustments become necessary, the agreement gives PUD officials the ability to make some plans, he said.

“We know how to structure our budget going forward. We got regulatory certainty, we got compliance certainty. We’re meeting our requirements for mitigating impacts on salmon and steelhead going forward. And then it gives us financial certainty over the next 10 years,” he said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at [email protected].