News & Views
Flood-damaged West Virginia hatchery expects full recovery in 2019

West Virginia’s White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery expects to resume supplying rainbow trout eggs to hatcheries in 14 states in 2019.

Flood waters damaged the US Fish and Wildlife Service facility in June 2016. Most of the physical damage has been repaired; the hatch house has been cleaned out and disinfected. However, another year and a half remains before the hatchery can fully resume its primary mission of supplying eggs because the facility requires a full three years to come up to speed, reported the West Virginia Gazette Mail.

It has taken more than a little adjustment on the part of the hatchery’s staff to get over the effects of the flood — not just to oversee repairs to all the damage, but also to grow a brand-new population of trout, the paper reported.

“We won’t be completely back to normal until 2019, but we’re getting there,” Tyler Hern, White Sulphur’s lead fish biologist, was quoted as saying.

February 19, 2018  By Liza Mayer

Flood damaged White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery in West Virginia in June 2016