SANDY -- A 59-year-old hatchery 20 miles from downtown Portland has jumped to the center of the Northwest's salmon debate, with fish advocates saying the hatchery threatens the Sandy River's thin runs of wild fish.
The Sandy Hatchery is part of a sprawling Northwest hatchery system that aims to compensate for damage to fish runs from dams in the Columbia River basin, where taxpayers and fishing license holders pay upwards of $80 million a year to support hatcheries.
In Oregon alone, 32 hatcheries released nearly 39 million juvenile salmon and steelhead last year, a torrent of fish that supplies commercial fishermen and sports anglers when adults return from the ocean.
After more than three decades of hatchery debate, Pacific Rivers Council and the Native Fish Society upped the ante this week by singling out the Sandy Hatchery.
The groups filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the hatchery's impacts on wild fish and delays in reviewing those impacts.
NOAA already says it will accelerate review of the hatchery at Oregon's request, making it the first to get full scrutiny under updated standards.
The Sandy River is a prime spot to recover wild runs listed under the Endangered Species Act and to make sure the latest science on hatcheries gets applied, said John Kober, Pacific Rivers Council's executive director.
Since 2007, two dams have come down in the Sandy basin, including the Marmot Dam on the Sandy's main stem, giving fish free passage to some 100 miles of streams.
Ratepayers in the city of Portland, which dammed a Sandy tributary, the Bull Run River, to create the city's drinking water reservoirs, are helping pay for $100 million of ongoing Sandy River restoration.
"We've addressed a lot of issues on the Sandy," Kober says. "If we address hatcheries we can recover wild fish and get them off the endangered species list."
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