Year-round flow tested on Chelan

CHELAN, Wash. – They turned on the Chelan River, and it works.

The Chelan County Public Utility District is spending nearly $16 million to restore year-round flow to the Chelan River Gorge, a four-mile stretch of river that tumbles from the dam at the foot of Lake Chelan to the Columbia River, about 400 feet below.

As a test, crews started spilling water Monday into the normally dry river bed. Water pooled near the river’s mouth and spilled into a carefully engineered channel with strategically placed boulders, logs and rocks, all to provide new spawning habitat for steelhead and chinook salmon.

“It’s one thing to look at the drawings, but when you see how the water actually flows around the boulders and wood structures and riffle, it’s another story,” biologist Steve Hays, the PUD’s fish and wildlife senior adviser, told the Wenatchee World.

“The real joy will be to see how fish react to it,” Hays said, adding that fish may spawn in the new habitat as early as this fall.

PUD officials are trying to make the stream as attractive as possible to fish. The channel is lined with gravel to give fish places to spawn. The utility will plant cottonwood trees and native shrubs this fall to protect the banks and provide shade to keep waters cool for fish.

“In 10 to 15 years, you should notice a substantial difference in the bank,” Hays said.

The water will flow from Lake Chelan Dam until early August for the test.

Work under way at the dam will allow a permanent, year-round flow to start in October for the first time since the dam was built in the 1920s.

The spawning seasons for steelhead and chinook salmon don’t correspond to the spill season, when river flows are higher. The PUD will supply higher flows that fish need by pumping water to the head of the new channel.

Work began on the project last June. It’s part of the utility’s new 50-year federal license to operate Lake Chelan Dam.