Plans For Cda Tribe’S Hatchery Expected To Be Approved Today $3 Million Hatchery Is First To Undergo Regional Review Process

The Northwest Power Planning Council is expected today to approve the planning stage of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s sophisticated $3 million hatchery.

The tribal trout hatchery is the first new hatchery in the Northwest to undergo a strict new regional review process.

It’s also the first likely to pass the review.

Planned for the tribe’s old powwow grounds on the lakeshore, the hatchery revolves around a concept called supplementation. Under this concept, local west-slope cutthroat are spawned, instead of fish from more distant river systems.

The tribe needs to make sure hatchery and native trout don’t mate, watering down the gene pool of naturally spawning fish already living in the streams around Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“That’s something the tribe will just have to work out as they go forward,” council spokesman John Harrison said. “Otherwise, we like it.”

Key issues are ensuring a steady water supply of 60 gallons a minute at the hatchery, and also containing the cost of rainbow trout for a series of trout ponds.

Both are doable, said Kelly Lillengreen, the tribe’s fish, water and wildlife department head.

“They want to make sure the engineering and necessary water is available before we proceed, which is smart,” Lillengreen said.

Salmon and steelhead that once returned to tribal fishing grounds started slapping up against dams such as Grand Coulee, which was finished in 1942. None return now.

Since the late 1980s, the tribe and the council have been working on a way to restore cutthroat to the Lake Coeur d’Alene system.

Along with dams, fish in streams on the Coeur d’Alene reservation have also suffered from the damaging effects of farming, logging and other development.

“The Coeur d’Alenes were very heavily dependent on our fisheries. That was our main food supply,” tribal councilor Richard Mullen said last year. “When the fish went, so did traditional ways.”

Once the hatchery is up and running, angling on hatchery fish could start by 2007, tribal biologists say. By 2016, they hope to be releasing 100,000 fish.

In the meantime, five trout ponds will supply anglers with fish, according to hatchery plans.

The council will decide on the hatchery during a two-day meeting starting today in Richland.

The council allocates funding from the Bonneville Power - a requirement since 1980 to pay for programs that help fish - to make up for salmon killed by dams.

Last year, following orders from Congress, the council declared a stringent three-stage scientific review for new hatcheries seeking BPA money.

An 11-member panel of fish biologists completed a report on the Coeur d’Alene hatchery Feb. 22 and recommended council approval, provided several conditions are met to address potential genetic mixing.

Planning is budgeted for about $650,000 through September. However, total completion cost for this phase, to finish next spring, is roughly $932,000, according to council documents. The hatchery was expected to break ground this fall, but Lillengreen said she now expects construction to start next spring.