Sometimes I move away from wrapping machinery and talk about sustainability from another viewpoint. Today  I was that lucky. I had the pleasure of touring the Robert E. Barrett Fishway on the Connecticut River in Holyoke Massachusetts.

The City of Holyoke gets most of its electricity from hydro-electric power at this dam. It has a series of canals that flow through its downtown area and provide some of the cheapest power in the Northeast. The mist of the spray can be felt from 20 yards away.

The problem is that the fish cannot get over the dam.  In general, fish like white water because there is action there, so luring them to a spot with white water is not a problem, it is getting them up and over that is the challenge. And we would be nowhere if we did not know how successful it was.

below the Holyoke dam

So Robert E. Barrett of Holyoke Gas & Electric, the municipal utility, started trying to find a way to get fish over the dam in a large volume and efficiently. This is the result.

Fish swim up to containment areas below the dam and are lifted in giant buckets up to a another level, like boats in locks, where people with counters go to work counting the fish. This year more than half a million shad went over the dam, as well as lampreys (eels), striped bass, salmon and sturgeon.

The Connecticut River still has salmon but barely.  It is the furthest south river in New England to have salmon, since salmon like cold water. Both salmon and sturgeon have to be lifted out of the  upper containment area and carried to a specific location on the river where they can meet other salmon and sturgeon and get acquainted. Salmon live in the river for two years after birth before going out to sea and up to Greenland. for another two years. Then they return to the river to spawn. The hope is that this process will increase the population of both salmon and sturgeon .

Here are some views of the upper containment area from which the fish go swimming off upstream.

View of upper containment area

shad awaiting their turn to go up river

This year saw the largest population of shad going over the dam in 20 years.  I am told the people counting fish had very sore thumbs from the volume they had to count. While shad season at the fish lift is coming to an end, it peaked at about 45,000 shad a day.

While I doubt we will be able to provide a a fish wrapping machine in the next few years, it is wonderful to see how sustainable and affordable hydro power can co-exist with increasing the fish population.

And if you wondered, the fish have no problem going over the dam heading down river.