Developing Successful Fish Screen Projects: Lessons Learned and Proper Planning

FCA has been designing and implementing fish screen projects for the past 9 years, with 34 projects installed in 5 states.   Development and implementation of projects has lead to an accumulation of lessons learned which in turn lead to the development of a  process for implementing successful fish screening projects.  Learning comes in many forms; quite often the most valuable lessons are those learned when things don’t go as planned.  FCA has experienced a few of these “learning” projects that have lead to valuable insights in to how to develop projects properly.  An analysis of difficult projects, the issues that arose, the cause of issues, and the remedies that resulted will be used to understand what can and will go wrong with fish screening projects.

Figuring out how to make a difficult project function the way it was intended is only half of the story.  The other half entails what is done with that knowledge going forward.  In conjunction with the Fish Screening Oversight Committee of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, FCA has developed a method for analyzing a project where all partners have a clear understanding of what to expect and who is responsible for each component.