Nevada Irrigation District (NID) Damages Salmon Even with Its Ill-conceived Attempts to Help Them

What should have been a great year for the wild salmon on the beautiful Auburn Ravine is turning out to be a disaster.  An early December storm brought fish into the system in much greater numbers than 2012, but the fish found themselves unexpectedly blocked by Nevada Irrigation District's (NID) Hemphill Dam.

A temporary baffle structure, built last year by Nevada Irrigation District (NID) to help fish past the dam in low water conditions, wasn’t removed on schedule or not planned to be removed at all.  The structure should have been removed before this year’s run and replaced by a system more suitable for normal water flows, like this year’s.  

But the district failed to remove the structure in time and it has remained in place during the storms and the ensuing high water conditions; it was finally removed after SARSAS pointed out the disaster.

Fox News gave a misleading news clip pointing out the great job NID did to remove the blockage saying nothing about NID's inattention created the mess.

Debris floating down the river caught on the retaining cable of the poorly designed baffle and formed a debris dam.  The debris dam actually makes Hemphill MORE dangerous to fish than its previous condition, before the temporary structure was built, because in its current state fish are funneled away from the channel towards the baffle, which they have no chance of getting over.  They are blocked from spawning in their historic grounds.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B78Hvmdw7prcNGZjeXFBZUZ2cW8/view?usp=sharing

               

                  Steve Hubbard