Quinault National Fish Hatchery

Project description

Cook Creek is a tributary to the Quinault River, which runs west from Quinault Lake and the Olympic Peninsula rain forest. The Cook Creek hatchery produces salmon and steelhead. Like many of these streams, the creek experiences highly variable flows. In flood conditions, it carries considerable bedload.

On the site of an existing weir, Smith-Root designed a new electric barrier to divert all migrating species into a bypass to the hatchery for sorting and egg collection. The weir contains a main deck and a smaller low flow section. There are seven steel rail electrodes embedded into the Insulcrete™ decks and side walls.

The barrier works well to divert the fish. There has been considerable maintenance associated with the bedload. It has also been found that the orientation of the original weir and the barrier is not consistent with the now existing stream flow, resulting in uneven water depth at low flows. Smith-Root continues to work with U.S. Fish and Wildlife on these issues.