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Tropical storm irene came in and
and uh... it did a lot of uh... damage to the facility here when it came in of
course we had tons millions of pounds of uh... silt and gravel that were all over the
place we had fish that had
swam out of the pools a lot of our buildings were not destroyed but they
were flooded and a lot of the equipment in and uh... stuff that was stored in
there was destroyed because of that
a year later we've done a lot of clean up here we started out with most
of our crew. we had to do a lot of uh...
moving of dirt we had to try to get the fish that were loose
but back into the pools they had calculated i think that it was close to
fifteen or sixteen million pounds of sand and silt
that had to be moved out we've had already one rehabilitation project
along our stream bank at the end of our property they restored that so that we
wouldn't lose anymore if we did have another flood hurricane irene was a sobering
experience to the citizens of vermont and
certainly to the
employees of fish and wildlife service but it was a dramatic event that's caused us to
reevaluate our priorities to re-evaluate what we do and how we do it
but most importantly it's been a wake-up call that if you do smart
fish and wildlife conservation
if you do affective and efficient fish passage you will preclude significant
property damage loss of life
and other kinds of destruction in extreme flood events... they had
undersized culverts there
and those converts washed out
ended in some
cases
damage to the roads that was in the neighborhood of a quarter million
dollars
so for a small
maybe thirty percent
more than the cost of what they had put in there that was undersized
they could have put in a fish friendly calmer and save themselves a quarter
million dollars and a lot of trouble
well it turns out the fish and wildlife service and the us forest service had
both installed what we call fish friendly culverts
in that area and they survive
a fish friendly culver is a culvert that does not restrict the river
it doesn't hold back big water flows in a flood and the stuff that goes with the
big water flow which is sentiment and wood trees debris stuff like that if if all
that can pass down a river so can the fish when people find that out then
it starts to make sense that they want to work in fish friendly realm
the ramifications of tropical storm irene whent significantly beyond just
extensive property damage loss of life
and loss of revenue and economic benefit for the citizens of vermont based upon
the tragedy in white river national fish hatchery and virtually the loss of all
atlantic salmon destined for the atlantic salmon restoration program the
service in consultation of collaboration with our partners made a hard decision
to terminate the atlantic salmon propagation program it does open up the
hatchery to be able to start looking at other things of that we might be able to
deal with other fish that we may be able to restore and those discussions are
already
undergoing right now with our state partners you know we're looking forward
to the future
uh... i'm certainly looking to see uh...
hopefully everything back
together but even improvements and probably uh...
will be able to tweak things make things will get better will be able to probably
do more as a result of it so i'm really optimistic about the future
especially for the facility here