Walhalla State Fish Hatchery

The Walhalla State Fish Hatchery (WSFH) has operated since the 1930s in Northwest South Carolina near the town of Mountain Rest, SC and serves as the state’s only cold-water fish hatchery. The facility is owned and operated by SCDNR who is currently working to renovate the hatchery, with plans to provide new infrastructure and refurbish hatchery components to improve operations and biosecurity. In 2025, SCDNR retained Schnabel to develop a comprehensive master plan that identifies which existing site features should be rehabilitated, prioritizes future improvements, and estimates the cost of the proposed work.

WSFH raises approximately 500,000 brown, brook and rainbow trout for stocking throughout the public waters of South Carolina and is currently operating at its maximum capacity due to two common, limiting factors – water supply and rearing space. The master plan focused on developing alternatives to address these limiting factors, including new final rearing raceways, modifications to the hatchery’s two surface water diversions and water supply piping, rehabilitation of the existing incubation and early rearing areas, water reuse systems, and temperature conditioning systems. Several alternatives were also developed to bolster the supplemental oxygen supply to the rearing areas – including rehabilitation and replacement of the existing LHOs and oxygenation columns, the addition of onsite oxygen generation, and new Water Spike Oxygenators.

Schnabel’s master plan included construction cost estimates and a quantitative evaluation of each alternative to prioritize potential improvement and inform SCDNR’s planning efforts. Following submission of the master plan, Schnabel has begun final engineering design for the improvements and will be supporting the project through construction. Schnabel has also completed design for replacement of the hatchery’s degraded liquid oxygen (LOX) tank and rehabilitation of the LOX delivery system to support continued operation of the hatchery.