Fish Facility Design

Our Boise office staffers have spent the majority of their careers working on fish protection and fisheries enhancement around hydropower projects in the Pacific Northwest. This 35+ years of experience has made us well versed in the criteria and contemporary design practices required for fishery work — we’ve learned many tricks of the trade, developed a few of our own, and are still learning.

We’ve been involved with both adult and juvenile passage at high dams across the region and the design of several new fish hatcheries and significant improvements at many others. Across the western U.S., we’ve completed hatcheries for utilities and resource agencies whose projects are driven by the rehabilitation and replacement of aging structures, FERC relicensing, and the optimization of existing resources. Our portfolio includes bioprograms, rehabilitated existing hatcheries, expanded operations, and the design of new, green-field hatcheries. We’ve also developed, evaluated, and ranked modernization improvements at hatcheries to meet or expand production goals.

Our engineers have worked directly with National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) engineers and biologists in the development and implementation of the fish screening criteria used today. This experience has taught us how to integrate hydraulic and mechanical engineering with NMFS criteria and fish behavior to create world-class screening facilities. Around these facilities, we’ve gained experience with flow measurement, diversion structures, fish protection, and myriad screening and cleaning systems.