The past few months have been busy at the Oden State Fish Hatchery construction site. There has been plenty of concrete poured and the site is really beginning to take shape. There are three groups of outdoor rearing areas for later rearing, each of which consists of four concrete raceways. Virtually all of the concrete for all of the raceways has been poured and just awaits a finish coat of epoxy to be completed. When the water enters a raceway it will be aerated as it passes through a "low head oxygenator" or LHO for short. Each raceway will receive up to one thousand gallons per minute of flow and can be separated into sections by installing screens along the length of the raceways. This will be handy for such things as crowding fish at the lower end of the raceway when loading them during fish planting season or for separating fish during fin clipping operations. There will also be baffles in each raceway, which will force most of the water to flow along the bottom three or four inches of the vertical column or depth of water. The baffles will help to keep the raceway free of fecal material and any small amount of uneaten feed that might be present. Each of the three groups of raceways will be enclosed so as to keep predators out and to keep direct sunlight off of the fish.

These enclosures have proven very beneficial at Harrietta, Thompson, Wolf Lake and Marquette hatcheries where they were constructed some years back. The higher concrete walls in the above photo are the lower portion of the enclosure walls. The upper portion will include a section of plastic mesh with steel siding above it.

Completed cement work for series of outdoor raceways as of December 2000.

The production water for the new facility will come from five twelve-inch production wells. Each well will be capable of producing up to approximately 1000 gallons of water per minute. When operating at full capacity the hatchery will utilize approximately 4000 gallons of water per minute. As much as another one thousand gallons per minute will be used in the incubation and early rearing area. This water will be routed out to be reused in the outdoor raceways after it goes through the early rearing tanks.

Drilling rig at site of one of the future production wells.

Another two thousand gallons of water will be added to the raceways bringing the total flow of first pass (water that has not be used yet) and second pass (water being reused from the early rearing tanks) water up to 3000 gallons per minute. In order to get the desired 1000 gallons per minute per raceway, reuse pumps will be installed below the third series of raceways. These pumps will be used to route up to 1000 gallons per minute of water back up to the first series of raceways. Before being pumped back up for reuse the water will be filtered by a drum screen filter to remove any solids form the water. Before it is used anywhere in the new facility, all of the production water must first pass through the head tank structure where high levels of harmful dissolved gasses like nitrogen can be removed and oxygen is added in its place. As of early February, much of the concrete work on the head tank has been completed. The wells will be drilled next spring.

Headbox aeration structure - February 2001.

The broodstock building is also well underway. This is where all of the adult fish used for egg take operations will be reared. It will include ten pairs of smaller concrete raceways, each of which can be split into smaller sections during egg takes. While the concrete work for the brood raceways is not yet complete, the contractors have begun erecting the steel framework for the enclosure that will house the broodstock. The construction of that enclosure will be similar to that of the production raceway enclosures. There will also be a six bay cold storage building attached to the broodstock building. This cold storage area is where vehicles and equipment such as tractors and the forklift will be stored.

Steel supports being erected for broodstock rearing building - February 2001.

The main hatchery building will be the "control center" of the new facility. This is where the fish will be incubated and hatched out. It is also where the early rearing of fish will occur. There will be 36 fiberglass tanks for production fish and another four for broodstock, each one being six feet in diameter. The main hatchery building is also where the offices, conference room, maintenance shop, laboratory, lunchroom and locker rooms will be located. There will be a state of the art monitoring and control system which will alert employees who are on call of any mechanical problems such as power outages that occur after normal business hours. As of early February 2001, the concrete portion of the main hatchery building walls is just about complete and the contractors are burying pipe and getting ready to pour the floor slab.

Main hatchery building - February 2001.

This website will be updated as work progresses. Please feel free to visit the hatchery and see the operation as it exists today. The new hatchery will be state of the art and will make an interesting comparison to "the way it used to be done." The gates open at 8:00am and close at 3:45pm, 365 days a year. We look forward to your visit!