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Pact Aims to Clean Fish Hatcheries

July 24, 2010 - AUGUSTA -- Two agencies wrangling over water quality at state fish hatcheries have agreed to improve operations to resolve a series of environmental violations.

The goal is to have cleaner water and less phosphorous flowing from the hatcheries and rearing stations into brooks and rivers.

A consent agreement between officials at the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife and the Department of Environmental Protection was signed last month. It will be in effect for 2 1/2 years.

The agreement resolves violations at all nine fish hatchery and rearing sites in the state. Only eight of the sites currently are operating, according to Todd Langevin, superintendent of hatcheries for the DIF&W.

"All hatcheries across the state were given a discharge permit through DEP with certain requirements for testing and certain parameters that must be met," Langevin said. "If it is exceeded, it results in a violation. This is a way to sort of clean the slate with violations that have happened to this point."

The discharge licenses are issued under Maine's Protection and Improvement of Waters law.

The agreement, available on the DEP website at www.maine.gov/dep/bep/2010/05-20-10/agenda.htm, notes that hatchery facilities "require high quality waters for raising fish, and therefore are mostly located on headwater streams and discharge to waters of higher classifications. Because of their locations, the discharge limitations placed upon these facilities are stringent."

At the Governor Hill Hatchery and Rearing Station off Burns Road in Augusta, Langevin said plans call for a more efficient way of handling removal of solids -- fish feed, fish waste and fish manure -- most of which contain phosphorous.

"What's there now is a long line of settling ponds, and it's extremely difficult to remove the waste from those ponds," Langevin said.

Phil Garwood, of DEP's Division of Water Quality Management, said a department survey of aquatic insects in the stream that feeds into Spring Brook and Bond Brook en route to the Kennebec River, "indicated the stream did not meet the normal standards for Class B water," he said.

Class B waters are defined in Maine law as "general-purpose water and are managed to attain good quality water. . . Well-treated discharges with ample dilution are allowed."

Another remediation step in the consent agreement calls for retrofitting of a clarifier at the Palermo Rearing Station in Palermo, where waters eventually discharge in the Sheepscot River. A leaky bypass gate at the Palermo site was also repaired.

Langevin said the Governor Hill hatchery -- which has warmer water -- starts a major portion of fry that are shipped to other facilities. At the hatchery are brook trout, lake trout and splake.

He said that hatchery produces approximately 300,000 fry -- defined as a recently hatched or juvenile fish -- each year and stocks approximately 60,000 fish totaling 25,000 pounds.

The Palermo Rearing Station stocks approximately 110,000 fish each year, totaling 46,000 pounds.

The funding for the work at the hatcheries came from state bond issues in 2002 and 2008, Langevin said.

If the corrections are made at all the facilities by specified dates, the fisheries department will avoid a civil $35,960 penalty that currently is suspended and permanently waived, according to the consent agreement.

"If they don't do something on time, the penalty would be due and payable immediately," Garwood said.

by Betty Adams, Kennebec Journal, July 24, 2010

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