Damaged kokanee spawning beds fixed

BAYVIEW – The last-minute efforts of Waterford Park Marinas to mitigate the damage done last spring to kokanee salmon spawning beds is complete.

Workers on Friday finished vacuuming up silt and mud from the spawning gravels along the west shores of Lake Pend Orielle.

The gravel beds and tens of thousands of fertilized eggs were smothered by silt in April as a result of an expansion project at the Harborview Marina in Bayview. The work was illegal, officials say, and likely wiped out a large portion of this year’s class of native kokanee on Lake Pend Oreille, some of which had already been spotted in the bay.

Pressure was building on marina owner Bob Holland to complete the work. He had already missed a state-imposed deadline of Oct. 1 and was given extra days to complete the job after he missed the Nov. 7 deadline.

Originally, the plan called for digging a huge pit in the parking area of the Harborview Marina, formerly known as the Bayview Marina. The plan called for pumping silt-laden water into this pit, where it would settle and leach through the soil and back into the lake. Apparently, the silt sealed the soil, which proved to not be as permeable as first thought.

Instead, the water was pumped into tanker trucks, which hauled their muddy loads up Perimeter Road to be dumped into a gravel pit owned by Scott Peck.

Although the spawning site near Bayview covers only a fraction of the lake bottom, it’s one of the last kokanee spawning strongholds in the lake, according to Idaho Fish and Game officials.

In April, just as tens of thousands of kokanee eggs were beginning to hatch at the site, they were crushed and smothered. Holland did not have a permit to have the work conducted, officials said. Not only were steel pilings pounded through the spawning beds, but the propeller wash from a construction barge turned the area in a stew of mud and fish eggs.

Idaho Fish and Game estimated the loss of the eggs and fry to be worth $1.4 million. Holland has since been fined $2,500, which is the maximum under state law.

Kokanee form the backbone of a $17 million sport fishery on Lake Pend Oreille, but the fish numbers have been plummeting in recent years because of spawning habitat loss and predation by exotic rainbow and lake trout.