New Flow at Minter Creek Hatchery from Upgraded Creek Diversion

I’m so curious if neighbors are seeing fish on gravel or places they haven’t seen them before.”

Minter Creek salmon hatchery replaced its main water diversion structure to enhance its dam, screening system, pipe, and fish ladder, increasing gravity-fed creek water available to the hatchery and improving fish passage for salmon moving upstream to spawn.

The structure is several hundred yards upstream from the hatchery. The old structure fed a 21-inch pipe that was unable to capture the hatchery’s full water right. Its screening system also failed to comply with modern standards.

The hatchery has an array of water sources to use in its incubation rooms,  holding pools, and raceways. Surface water from the creek can be had from the gravity-fed upper intake structure, a pump-driven lower intake structure, and a recapture system that reuses water before it leaves the hatchery. The hatchery also boasts four wells onsite that can provide up to 1,000 gallons per minute of clean aquifer water.

Hatchery manager Ben Lowery said it’s the most complex system he has worked with. He likes that it gives him options. “In a perfect world,” he said, “we’re going to run off of gravity. It runs downhill, there are no pumps, there is no electricity, it’s a lot cheaper for us to run, and it’s the most reliable.”

The hatchery, operated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, incubates up to 13 million eggs each year. Jason Smith, hatchery operations manager for South Puget Sound, said, “It’s the biggest incubation facility we have in the South Puget Sound.”

The well water is a big part of that. It is pathogen-free, meaning it can be used to incubate and raise fish from other watersheds without an intensive pathogen testing program. Each year, for example, the Minter hatchery receives 4 million eggs and milt from the hatchery at Tumwater Falls on the Deschutes River, above Capitol Lake in Olympia, which it incubates for several months before trucking them back, since the Tumwater Falls hatchery does not have incubation infrastructure.

Each year, the Minter Creek hatchery distributes 1.5 million chum eggs. The recipients include more than 50 schools that raise salmon in classrooms and release them in local creeks. A million fall chinook eggs go to the Suquamish Tribe, along with additional coho eggs.

“We have a lot because we have so much well water,” said Lowery. “We have an abundance, which is fantastic.”

And then 4.8 million fish are released right into Minter Creek. These are chum, coho, fall chinook, and spring chinook. Here in mid-spring, said Lowery, all of the fish raised for offsite releases have already left. “It’s kind of nice, everything at Minter now is our fish.” It is the most water-intensive part of the year, as the fish progress from eyed eggs to alevin to fry to smolt. The coho stay onsite the longest, taking nearly a year and a half before they are ready to head to the big water.

Lowery expects the new diversion structure to significantly improve passage for fish going upstream to naturally spawn. These include chum and coho, as well as cutthroat and the occasional pink. He manages the Hupp Springs Hatchery about a mile up Minter Creek, and said he noticed more chum upstream this year. “I’m so curious if neighbors are seeing fish on gravel or places they haven’t seen them before. (The new diversion structure) is definitely much more user-friendly for the fish.”

Smith said many of the state’s hatcheries face challenges due to aging infrastructure, but that the Minter hatchery is in a good situation thanks to the recent project and a significant rebuild in the 1990s.

Lowery agreed. “Our infrastructure is just fantastic. We have a lot of different ways to move water around, a large rearing space, cover over our heads when we’re spawning, crowders that do the hard work (of moving fish) for you. We’re really fortunate in that regard.”

Even the self-cleaning screens on the intake structure have won him over. “I was a little reluctant because it’s now digitalized. One more thing to break. But man, some of it is so cool. It can automatically clean (the screens) for you."