By Lois Henry, SJV Water
The state is poised to spend a little more than $7 million to get the fish hatchery near Kernville back up and running in order to protect the endemic Kern River rainbow trout.
The plan is to find pure Kern River rainbow DNA to start a broodstock at the hatchery and stock only those fish in the upper reaches of the north fork of the river. Somewhere above Fairview Dam, about 16 miles upriver from Kernville.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which owns the hatchery, has the funding and a construction timetable that anticipates project completion some time in 2027, according to Jennifer Benedet, a department spokesperson.
The hatchery has been deemed vital to the maintenance of the species, already listed as “of concern” by CDFW and the U.S. Forest Service.
But past, recurring problems with heat and bacteria, intermittent shuttering and concerns about the department’s future stocking plans, have river advocates and anglers feeling cautious, at best.
“We are looking for a happy ending to the story,” wrote Gary Bray, vice president of the Kern River Fly Fishers club.
He wrote that the club is highly supportive of re-opening the Kernville hatchery to develop pure broodstock.
“There are at least two complications with this plan,” he wrote. “First, we have not yet seen evidence that CDFW has found a pure strain of Kern River Rainbow. Secondly, the reason they want to plant the fish above Fairview is because that is the location where the Southern California Edison Company draws a significant percentage of the water out of the river and sends it down canyon via an aqueduct to KR3 (Kern River 3), the powerhouse near Kernville.”
Reducing the river’s flow for 16 miles means hotter water and trout don’t do well in warm water, he wrote.
“Many of our thermometer-carrying members have reported water temps in the high 70’s and low 80’s during low water years, when the section of the river below Fairview is reduced to a trickle,” Bray wrote.
CDFW, however, has not sought higher flows from Edison saying that stretch of river isn’t prime habitat for the Kern River rainbow.
“Even if you took the Fairview dam out entirely, it wouldn’t improve the native fishery that much,” Gerald Hatler, Program Manager for CDFW’s Central Region told SJV Water earlier this year. “If we’re going to improve things for the Kern River rainbow, we need to focus above Fairview and keep the hatchery functional.”
To get it functional, CDFW will need to replace a 0.7-mile long siphon from the KR3 plant to the hatchery. That siphon historically brought colder water from above Fairview Dam into the hatchery.
But it was problematic for years, breaking down, allowing water hatchery tanks to heat up, breeding bacteria and killing off fish, Hatler told SJV Water. The hatchery was closed from 2016 to 2019 for a major renovation then briefly reopened before being shut down again in 2020.
It has remained closed since then.
In 2023, a massive wall of water barreled down the Kern River and tore apart the hatchery siphon, leaving it in shreds.
The money is being cobbled together from several sources: $3.5 million from Proposition 68; $3,259,000 from the state’s drought resiliency program; and $284,500 from the general fund, Benedet wrote in an email.
The department has spent $948,773 so far on preconstruction costs including an environmental review.
In mid-July of this year, SJV Water was told that CDFW researchers expected to have DNA results back “in a few weeks” from rainbow trout samples collected in 2022.
That information will be incorporated into a revamped 1995 management plan for how best to protect the Kern River rainbow, according to Benedet.
And once the hatchery is up and running, broodstock collected and raised, native fish will again be stocked in the river.
“Though the transition will take significant time and effort to achieve,” Benedet acknowledged.
Anglers and Kern River advocates, though, have been here before.
After the 2016-2019 hatchery renovation and subsequent closure, fisherman Larry Elman vented his frustration with the CDFW in a letter to the editor published in the Bakersfield Californian in 2021.
He said the department’s urgency to address the Kern River rainbow amounted to “…decades of passing the buck, shrugs of shoulders, nothing happening and delay after delay after delay.
“We have been told for the last 10 years that Kern River rainbow brood stock will be acquired in the next year or two by the CDFW” with no discernable progress.
Despite those long-running frustrations, the Kern River Fly Fishers have great hope that the hatchery project will finally get off the ground and improve river recreation, which will help Kernville’s tourist economy, according to Bray.
“…putting more fish in the river will obviously offer the fisherman a better opportunity to catch fish. This will make lots of fishermen happy. And that makes others happy, as well.”
