The new facility will open with a ceremony and guided tours

By KYLE ODEGARD
Gazette-Times reporter

ALSEA — A grand opening for the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, the $8 million facility created out of the remains of the mothballed Fall Creek Hatchery near Alsea, will be held Oct. 14.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski will attend. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and there will be self-guided tours of the center.

“I’m very excited. It’s going to be a lot of fun,” said Ryan Couture, the new facility manager.

There is no on-site parking at the event, but shuttle vans will run from Alsea School, Salmonberry Park, Campbell Park, Rivers Edge Park and Missouri Bend Park.

The center, just west of the Benton County border on Highway 34, is designed to study the differences between wild and hatchery salmon and steelhead to create better practices for Oregon hatcheries. It would not be a typical fish production facility.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon State University, which will have students on site, will cooperate on the project.

The center includes an 18,000-square-foot research building that has labs and residence halls, four artificial streams to simulate natural habitat, and an 88-tank fish farm.

The site is still getting minor finishing touches one week before the grand opening, Couture said.

“We’re hoping to wrap up construction this week and then do a final clean next week and be ready for the opening.”

Couture hopes to do some research this fall, such as monitoring fish migration in Fall Creek.

Juvenile fish also will be used to test tanks and incubation systems.

“We’ll basically just do a complete facility shakedown and make sure the facility is working properly before we begin any large-scale research projects,” Couture said.

Also on hand for the ceremony will by David L.G. Noakes, who will join the center on Oct. 15 as its senior scientist.

An Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife news release describes Noakes as “one of the world’s premier fish biologists and ecologists.”

For more information, contact the state Department of Fish and Wildlife at 503-947-6000 or www.dfw.state.or.

us/OHRC.

Kyle Odegard covers Philomath and rural Benton County.

He can be contacted at

kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.