Another challenge at Naches fish hatchery: lack of water

NACHES, Wash. — In the spring, the Naches Hatchery was at risk of being closed because of a lack of money.

Now, the fish hatchery is threatened by a lack of water, the Yakima Herald (http://is.gd/29Y2CY), reported.

The hatchery usually stocks more than 100,000 trout for about 80 area lakes. It uses Naches River groundwater pulled from an underground network of pipes and wells. The water is pumped into the fish runways and a quarter-acre rearing pond.

On Tuesday, the pumps shut down because there wasn’t enough water in the well. Hatchery officials say that was a first time it happened in its history.

“It’s a big problem,” said Mike Lewis, who oversees management of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s four hatcheries in south-central Washington.

The water level in the hatchery wells is a dozen feet below normal.

Hatchery manager Matt Mathes said 2014 was the first time the hatchery faced a significant water-level drop, “but it was short-lived, probably four or five weeks, and then it came back up.

“But that was nothing compared to what this is. This is certainly more extreme,” he said.

The timing of the water shortage isn’t yet critical, however, since the hatchery doesn’t reach its highest fish capacity until the late winter. That’s when it’s packed with catchable-sized trout to be stocked into area lakes.

The state’s regional fish program manager, John Easterbrooks, says water levels could be lower in the winter. When the groundwater gets locked in snow and ice, the river gets low.

A crew is working to update the hatchery’s water management system, which Lewis called archaic. They’re hoping to maximize the hatchery’s available water with some re-routing and recycling.

The fish in the hatchery will have to be removed during the construction of the recycling process and will be temporarily housed at Columbia Basin hatchery in Moses Lake, Easterbrooks said.

As for how that recycled water will impact the fish, Mathes said, “We won’t know until we try it.”

It’s clear to fisheries officials, though, that something must be done — and quickly, before lower winter water levels result in, quite literally, fish out of water.