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<DIV><FONT size=2><A
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farmers design a breakthrough for fish, growers alike - OregonLive.com</A>
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<H1><FONT size=5><B>Oregon farmers design a breakthrough for fish, growers
alike</B></FONT></H1><BR><BR><FONT size=2><BR><BR></FONT><FONT
size=4><B><I>A newly patented fish screen appears to protect fish and make
money<BR></I></B></FONT><FONT size=2> <BR><BR></FONT><BR>
<H4><B>FACTBOX</B></H4><BR><BR><FONT size=2><BR><BR>• <A
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<BR> <BR></FONT>August 14, 2008 <FONT size=2><BR></FONT>MICHAEL
MILSTEIN<BR><B>The Oregonian Staff<BR></B><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Floods
racing off Mount Hood in 1996 nearly destroyed the little Farmers Irrigation
District. Its water intakes in the Hood River Valley were in ruins. The
small hydroelectric plants that brought in revenue were shut down. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>"We were broke," says Jerry Bryan, the district's project
manager. "We were fundamentally bankrupt." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The
district then did something more befitting NASA or Intel than a bunch of
tapped-out apple and pear growers. It launched its own research and
development program, employing high-tech design tools and computational
fluid dynamics. The goal: Build a better fish screen. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>The district wanted a screen that would keep protected
salmon out of irrigation intakes while reducing exposure to damaging debris.
<BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Today the district has patented a screen design
that could promote a revolution in fish protection while saving farmers time
and money. The design is innovative in its simplicity: Unlike traditional
screens installed across the Pacific Northwest it has no moving parts and
cleans itself. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The new screen freed the district
from costly maintenance that almost sank it. No longer do its screens clog
with glacial silt washing off Mount Hood, and they're safe from destructive
floods. Now the district is making money. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>A
curious group from New Zealand flew in this year to see how the screen works
and is interested in installing some. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The
irrigation district launched a nonprofit to take what it calls the Farmers
Screen commercial and reinvest the proceeds into rural communities.
<BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"Our deep, dark secret is that taking care of
fish makes us a lot of money," Bryan said. "Screening became the key element
to our fiscal success." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>If the 1996 floods
provided the opportunity to create the new fish screen, windsurfing provided
its inspiration. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Dan Kleinsmith got a job at
Farmers Irrigation District just before the floods hit. The one-time
windsurfer ended up helping unclog fish screens so water could keep flowing
to the hydroelectric plants. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>After the floods,
the irrigation district had two choices: Shut down, or try to come up with a
better way of drawing water from the unpredictable and silty Hood River.
<BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The way district leaders saw it, there was only
one choice. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"The alternative was no alternative
at all, which was to give up," Bryan recalls. "There wasn't a lot of vision.
There was a lot of desperation." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The district
set Kleinsmith up in a windowless building once used for cold storage. He
and others, including his brother, Mike Kleinsmith -- now the district
manager -- started building models of fish screens, seizing on a new
approach a couple of farmers had tried. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>They sat
around a big round table and tossed around design ideas. Then they'd go
build trial versions. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Traditional irrigation
diversions often work against the water: They try to manhandle streams,
routing them into screens. If the screens are vertical, water shoves fish
and debris against them. To a windsurfer like Kleinsmith, that made little
sense. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"When you windsurf, you don't try to
control the wind -- you try to work with the wind," he said. "It's kind of
like a Zen-like thing." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>They pursued a different
design: The screen is not vertical, it's horizontal. Water flows through a
flume and over the flat screen. This, by itself, wasn't new. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>But such flat screens long suffered from problems: Water
dropping through them pulls fish and debris down against the surface,
clogging the flow. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"I probably spent more hours
staring at fish screens than anyone I know," Dan Kleinsmith said. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>They wanted water to wash fish and debris over the screen.
Yes, some water would drop through the screen as it passed. But if the
forward current moved fast enough it would propel fish, sticks, stones,
leaves and any other debris across and beyond the screen. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>The trick was to slow the water dropping through the
screen. Then it couldn't draw fish and debris down very hard. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>They did this in a few ways: First, the screen itself is a
metal plate full of holes and is only 50 percent open. So water passes
through it slowly -- only a small fraction of a foot per second. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>Also, the water flows forward through a chute that narrows
like the nozzle of a hose. That keeps the water moving quickly -- about four
to six feet per second. In short, water moves over the screen faster than it
drops through the screen. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>This keeps fish
speeding ahead. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Also, water dropping down
through the screen must also rise back up and over an adjacent wall, further
slowing it down. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The design is not suited to all
conditions: There must be enough slope in a stream to keep the water moving
fast enough. But Kleinsmith and others have built commercial versions in all
sizes and have a small, modular version that can be quickly assembled.
<BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"If the flood of '96 hadn't come through, none
of this would have happened," he says. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>When the
district started installing the screens in its own diversions, its leaders
knew they were on to something. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"It turned our
problems around overnight," Bryan recalls. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>No
more debris clogs. No more shutting down the hydroplants. What was good for
fish, it turned out, was good for farmers, too. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>This proved as revolutionary as the screen itself.
<BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"You had a relatively conservative bunch of
farmers thinking that protecting fish was a fiscally responsible thing to
do," Bryan says. "When we started paying attention to fish criteria, our
debris problems went away." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>It also opened for
the Farmers Irrigation District an enormous market opportunity. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>More than 50,000 irrigation diversions in Oregon do not
have fish screens. Thousands more exist in other Western states. Not all are
large, or suck up many fish, but some do. Every fish that ends up in an
irrigation ditch means one less in the rivers -- and for endangered salmon
species, one fish can be extremely valuable. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The
district patented the screen. It created Farmers Conservation Alliance, a
nonprofit corporation in Hood River, to market the screen around the West.
The nonprofit will invest revenue back into rural communities to support
energy and water conservation projects. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The
Natural Resources Conservation Service provided a $529,000 "conservation
innovation" grant to promote the design, calling for 56 installations by
2011. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>The nonprofit's first installation of the
screen is up and running in the Lacomb Irrigation District east of Albany.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and NOAA-Fisheries in conjunction
with the Fish America Foundation all contributed. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>"I think it's going to solve a lot of our problems," said
Dean Castle, chairman of the board of the Lacomb district. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>"These guys came up with an innovative solution to a
definite problem," said Kerry Griffin of NOAA-Fisheries, the federal agency
that oversees threatened salmon. The agency doesn't normally fund new
technology, but it contributed to the Lacomb installation to get the new
screen design in place. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>"We thought it offered
so much promise, we wanted to help move it along," he said. <BR><FONT
size=2><BR></FONT>From the view of farmers, the money saved from not having
to unclog screens and the uninterrupted hydropower revenue means more money
for improving their irrigation systems to save water. That, in turn, helps
fish. <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>While investing profits back into
communities may seem generous, Bryan said, "whenever we address the common
good, we do better." <BR><FONT size=2><BR></FONT>Michael Milstein:
503-294-7689; michaelmilstein@ news.oregonian.com<FONT size=2>
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