GOLD RIVER, Calif. - The Bureau of Reclamation and California Department of Fish and Wildlife today celebrated the completion of the new Nimbus Hatchery Fish Passage Project with a ribbon-cutting event. The completed project, over a decade in the making, creates a more reliable and safer system for collecting adult fall-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout at the Nimbus Hatchery.
“We are very pleased to complete this important project to benefit fall-run Chinook salmon and steelhead populations," said Reclamation Regional Director Ernest Conant. “We appreciate our long-standing partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to help with the design and construction as well as with Nimbus Hatchery operations."
The American River once provided approximately 100 miles of spawning habitat for native Chinook salmon and steelhead trout. With the construction of the Nimbus Dam, these fish lost access to historical spawning and rearing habitat. Reclamation built the Nimbus Fish Hatchery and ladder structure in the 1950s to mitigate for lost habitat; CDFW operates and maintains the hatchery.
While the hatchery infrastructure has been modernized over the years, the existing weir and ladder system have received few updates. Reclamation, in partnership with CDFW, designed a new fish ladder and flume fishway to collect adult fish more reliably. The 1,900-foot-long passageway consists of a rock-lined channel, weir fish ladder, and concrete flume. The new structure also features underwater public viewing windows. Water will run through the fish ladder when conditions are ripe for egg collection-normally around the first week of November for fall-run Chinook salmon and flow until the steelhead trout season ends in March.
“Not only will this new and improved fish ladder greatly improve our hatchery operations and efficiencies at Nimbus, we’ve moved the ladder entrance to lessen the disturbance for those salmon and steelhead spawning naturally in the river," said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “We’re proud to be part of a project that simultaneously benefits both our hatchery operations and wild-spawned fish and improves the visitor experience along the river and ladder for our Sacramento-area constituents who love to tour this facility, even though it has been closed recently due to COVID-19."
For additional information, visit https://www.usbr.gov/mp/ccao/hatchery/ and https://wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Hatcheries/Nimbus.
Source: Bureau of Reclamation
