Multimillion dollar contract awarded for fish facility.PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 1995--A contract to construct a multimillion dollar juvenile fish sampling and monitoring facility at John Day Dam John Day Dam, 219 ft (67 m) high and 5,640 ft (1,719 m) long, on the Columbia River between Oregon and Wash.; built between 1959 and 1968 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is an extremely large generator of hydroelectric power. on the Columbia River Columbia River River, southwestern Canada and northwestern U.S. Rising in the Canadian Rockies, it flows through Washington state, entering the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Ore.; it has a total length of 1,240 mi (2,000 km). was awarded on Dec. 13, 1995, by the Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Juvenile salmon moving downriver down·riv·er adv. & adj. Toward or near the mouth of a river; in the direction of the current: swam downriver; a downriver canoe race. Adv. 1. during the 1997 migration will be the first to use the facility. P.K. Contractors of Spokane, Wash., submitted the low bid of $16,020,541. Construction will begin by late December on the elevated three-part fish passage system that will be more than 2,400 feet long. The facility, which will be completed in mid- 1997, will expand juvenile fish monitoring capabilities at John Day and include adult holding and sampling areas. Survival data compiled at John Day will provide important information for in-season and long-term management of the river system. In addition, a variety of other research work relevant to all migrating species will be done at this facility. This fish passage system includes a 1,200-foot-long, 5-foot-wide, 20-foot-deep chute extending along the Oregon shore from the powerhouse to the second part of the system, a dewatering Dewatering (dē′wöd·ər·iŋ) is the removal of water from solid material or soil by wet classification, centrifugation, filtration, or similar solid-liquid separation processes. building. At the highest point, the chute will be 50 feet above ground level. The dewatering building is 100 feet long and 40 feet wide. Part of the water in the chute will be diverted inside that building, creating a funnel effect that will move the fish into a smaller amount of water for easier handling. From the dewatering building the young fish will travel another 1,200 feet through a three-foot-diameter transport flume to the sampling and monitoring building. There, a computerized monitoring system will be used to analyze PIT tags (passive integrated transponders) placed in the fish at various hatchery hatchery a commercial establishment dedicated to the hatching of bird eggs to provide day old chicks and poults to the poultry industry. hatchery liquid the contents of unfertilized eggs. Used in petfood manufacture. and up-river capture locations to obtain data on juvenile survival rates and travel times. Also, biologists will check physical condition of the fish to ensure the bypass is working correctly. PIT tags, which are small coils of wire encased en·case tr.v. en·cased, en·cas·ing, en·cas·es To enclose in or as if in a case. en·case  ment n. in glass, are inserted into statistically valid numbers of fish. The tags are inactive until the fish passes through detectors located at many of the monitoring facilities on the Columbia and Snake rivers Snake RiverRiver, northwestern U.S. It is the largest tributary of the Columbia River and one of the most important streams in the Pacific Northwest. It rises in the mountains of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and flows south and west through Idaho, turning north at . The detectors trigger each tag to send a coded message to a 24-hour-a-day computer data base operated and maintained by the Pacific States The Pacific States form one of the nine geographic divisions within the United States that are officially recognized by that country's census bureau. There are five states in this division — Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington — and, as its name Marine Fisheries fisheries. From earliest times and in practically all countries, fisheries have been of industrial and commercial importance. In the large N Atlantic fishing grounds off Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, European and North American fishing fleets have long Commission. The Corps will operate the facility. On-site biologists from the National Marine Fisheries Service The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is a United States federal agency. A division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Commerce, NMFS is responsible for the stewardship and management of the nation's living marine and the Corps, in addition to biologists from various other fishery agencies, will do the monitoring and sampling, and analyze the information gathered there. From the sampling and monitoring building, tagged fish will be bypassed back into the river downstream of the powerhouse. The new facility is part of work undertaken by the Corps within the Columbia River Fish Mitigation Program. Work underway on every part of the juvenile and adult bypass systems at all Corps projects is being done for one purpose: to move migrating fish, juvenile and adult, past the dams safely and quickly. The Corps' goal is to provide the maximum possible fish passage protection while fulfilling its obligation to operate Corps projects to balance all resource needs. As part of the federal family, the Corps is working aggressively with other regional interests to preserve the valuable fish runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Other bidders were: Abhe and Svoboda Inc., Prior Lake, Minn., with a bid of $24,463,810; Haskell Construction, Bellingham, Wash., with a bid of $19,196,181; Harcon Inc., Spokane, Wash., with a bid of $17,850,000; and Humphrey Construction, Woodinville, Wash., with a bid of $16,853,500. CONTACT: Dawn M. Edwards, 503/326-6005 |
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