South Santiam Hatchery

The South Santiam Hatchery sits on the river just downstream from Foster Dam, about 5 miles east of downtown Sweet Home. To reach it from Highway 20, cross the top of the dam, turn left onto River Road, and drive half a mile to the gate. The grounds cover 12.6 acres at 500 feet above sea level, on land owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife runs the hatchery under a cooperative agreement with the Corps.

The site holds Burrows-type concrete raceways (ODFW’s visitor’s guide counts fourteen), a large rearing pond 147 feet long, fiberglass starter troughs, and vertical incubators. Water runs in from Foster Reservoir. The visitor’s guide puts the daily flow through the rearing ponds at about 11.7 million gallons. Juvenile spring Chinook and summer steelhead are in the ponds all year, and the hatchery feeds them about 120,000 pounds of fish feed a year.

The ponds below Foster Dam

Visitors may walk the grounds on a self-guided tour from 7:30 in the morning until dusk. A 1,200-gallon aquarium holds adult and juvenile fish of several species. In late summer and early fall, adult fish are often visible on the hatchery side of the river at the base of the old fish ladder.

Across the water, at the foot of the dam, stands the Foster Adult Fish Facility, where returning adults are captured and held from March to October. The public may not enter it, but a viewing area with a visitor kiosk overlooks it. Hatchery hosts live in an RV site on the grounds. The guide tells visitors with questions to ask an employee or a host, or to stop by the office near the flagpole. There is a campground, a picnic area, a restroom, and fishing. The guide lists birds of prey, wading birds, and waterfowl among the wildlife. Upstream, Foster Reservoir is open all year for fishing, boating, and camping. ODFW gives June through January as the best months to see adult and juvenile fish.

The adults are large. Spring Chinook spend three to four years in the ocean, average 15 pounds, and reach as much as 40. Summer steelhead come back two to three years after release, average 6 pounds, and reach as much as 18. When the juveniles leave the hatchery, the salmon are about 6 inches long and the steelhead about 7.

A September of eggs

Spring Chinook are spawned in September and summer steelhead in December and January. The visitor’s guide describes the process. Workers and volunteers take the eggs from the females and fertilize them with milt from the males. A Chinook female carries 4,000 to 5,000 eggs, a steelhead 3,500 to 4,500. The fertilized eggs go into incubators until they reach the “eyed” stage, about a month later. Then they ship to other hatcheries to finish incubating, and fingerlings from those shipments come back to the South Santiam to rear.

The 2024 program plan sets the numbers. The hatchery sends eyed Chinook eggs to the Willamette, Gnat Creek, and Oxbow hatcheries, and 20,000 eggs to the state’s Salmon and Trout Enhancement Program. It rears 1,020,000 spring Chinook smolts for the South Santiam, releasing some in late October and early November and the rest from February to mid-March. Every one is fin-clipped and otolith-marked. Summer steelhead smolts go into the river in early April.

The steelhead came to the Santiam from Washington State in the late 1960s, of Skamania stock. The plan states that none are passed above Foster Dam, so that they do not compete with native winter steelhead and trout.

All of this is mitigation. The Corps’ share of the funding pays for fishing lost to the construction of Foster and Green Peter dams. The visitor’s guide states that these fish “are not intended to replace wild populations, but are to enhance the numbers of fish available for the enjoyment of all anglers.”

Each egg take is counted by hand and machine. In March 2005, manager Bill Nyara reported that the crew and volunteers had spawned over 1.5 million summer steelhead eggs that winter, from fish caught at the Foster trap the summer before. After three to four weeks of incubation, each spawning’s eyed eggs were picked and counted with a picking machine before shipment.

Dirt ponds upstream

The first hatchery on the South Santiam began in 1925, about 5 miles upstream from the present site. It raised about 100,000 spring Chinook a year in dirt ponds for release into the river. The present hatchery came with the building of Foster Dam and was dedicated in 1968 to rear spring Chinook and summer steelhead. Its large rearing pond and first ten raceways date from 1969, and four more raceways were added in 1985. The 2024 plan notes that all of them are starting to show erosion.

The night of September 5, 1969

The hatchery’s water arrives by gravity through two pipelines from the forebay of the dam. In September 1969, the Fish Commission of Oregon’s crew was mixing warm water from the upper intake with cold water from the lower intake to hold the ponds at 13.5°C. Submerged debris partly plugged the grate on the upper intake. As the reservoir was drawn down, surface debris lodged against the grating as well. Water stopped flowing smoothly into the pipe. It entered around the edges of the grate and tumbled aerated into the throat of the pipe. On the morning of September 5, the headbox temperature dropped from 13.5 to 10.5°C.

The next morning, hatchery personnel found dead and dying fish in every rearing pond. Nearly all of them showed air bubbles under the skin. During the night, nearly half a million fingerlings had been lost to nitrogen gas embolism: about 75 percent of the station’s spring Chinook and 99 percent of its summer steelhead.

Ellis J. Wyatt and Kirk T. Beiningen of the Commission’s Hatchery Biology Section came back to recreate the failure. From late September into early October, they drew the reservoir down to the September 5 level, 192.3 meters. They laid a 1-meter square of plywood over the grating to stand in for debris and held caged Chinook fingerlings in the ponds. Within 10 minutes, dissolved nitrogen in the screening box rose from 103 to 153 percent of saturation. By October 3 it reached 175 percent.

The test fish lost the ability to swim into the current, then their balance. They writhed belly-up, and nearly all died within four minutes of the first abnormal behavior. None tried to dive deeper. Hatchery manager Ted Williams and his crew assisted throughout. The study’s purpose was to set criteria for running the water supply safely.

Four years later the Corps turned to visitors. On November 1, 1973, Sweet Home’s New Era reported a facelift at Foster. It included a footbridge over the Santiam to the fish hatchery, landscaping at the hatchery, and interpretive displays.

Basket, tube, and flume

Foster Dam’s 1960s design included an adult collection system. A ladder led into a holding pond beside the spillway, and from there fish went into a hopper basket. The New Era recalled that ODFW officials would “jump into the basket” and sort the fish by hand: wild fish into a truck going upstream, hatchery fish downstream for anglers.

Alex Paul of the Albany Democrat-Herald watched a recycling day at that trap in July 2010. Surplus fish in good condition were trucked back downriver so anglers could have another chance at them. Staff in full rain suits stepped into the trap at the base of the dam. A metal sweep pushed fish into a confined area, and carbon dioxide was pumped into the water to stun them slightly. Rick Pace, Robyn Greene, and Mike Price grabbed the fish one by one by their tails. Each was lifted into a rubber inner tube held by technician Nick Gilbo, while volunteer Elaine Deitweiler of Lebanon kept count. The process was repeated about 140 times, with calls of “Steelhead buck, recycled” or “female salmon, native.”

The fish slid down long tubes to trucks pre-filled with river water. Some of the larger salmon slapped the tubing so hard it sounded like a helicopter hovering nearby. “Because the water returns into the river, we aren’t allowed to use chemicals,” said Price, who had worked at the hatchery for 32 years. At the Pleasant Valley boat ramp, Pace backed the truck down and opened a valve, and the fish shot out in a wave of bubbling water. A few tried to swim up nearby Ames Creek. “It will take a day or two before they bite, if at all,” said Jim Slater Roth of Sweet Home, fishing from the bank.

The system changed after a 2008 NOAA Fisheries biological opinion to the Corps, issued under the Endangered Species Act. The new facility cost $14 million. The New Era reported it online April 1, 2014. ODFW took over operations that April, and its plan records completion in July 2014. The facility ended the hauling of adults to the hatchery and the holding of broodstock there.

Fish now climb part of the old ladder, then a new ladder across the face of the powerhouse, and pass through gates and chutes with water-to-water transfers instead of nets. “The first day we tried it, there were 19 fish, and all of it was the winter steelhead,” said David Griffith, a Corps fish biologist. Researchers took DNA and scale samples from the arrivals. “The adults coming back up, we’ll know exactly who their parents are,” said Corps spokesman Scott Clemans.