Hatchery Funding Issue

[Ozark Sweetwater]

Here is some new info on the hatchery funding....

About $5.2 million in a federal omnibus funding bill should be enough money to keep federally owned and operated fish hatcheries near Norfork and Greers Ferry going through 2015.

Mike Oetker, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Southeast Region, told The Baxter Bulletin on Thursday that hatcheries are included in the most recent omnibus funding bill. He said officers of the FWS, operators of the hatcheries, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, owner of the hatcheries, agreed to move funds for Arkansas hatcheries to a Corps of Engineers budget line item. So, the funding for the hatcheries will come from the Corps, he said.

"(The Arkansas hatcheries) are in the president's budget that Congress has approved," Oetker said. "This is the normal way the hatcheries are funded."

FWS will continue, as usual, providing staff and biological expertise to run the hatcheries.

The $5.2 million will support Arkansas hatcheries and seven more in other states.

Oetker told a public meeting of the Friends of the Norfork National Fish Hatchery here in March that funding for the hatcheries, and negotiations between the Corps and FWS, were complete.

It was the first time anyone from Fish and Wildlife Service has come here to talk to us
Leon Alexander, President of Friends of the Norfork National Fish Hatchery
Leon Alexander, president of Friends of the Norfork National Fish Hatchery, said he left the meeting feeling confident about Oetker's report and hopeful that FWS or the Corps would announce the funding and operating plan.

"It was the first time anyone from Fish and Wildlife Service has come here to talk to us," Alexander said.

Hatchery funding, renewed by the president and Congress annually, has become more iffy than ever since the onset of The Great Recession and related federal budget cuts — all compounded by the Budget Control Act of 2011, also known as the "sequestration" bill that lops more than $1 trillion from federal agencies and programs over the course of a decade.

Alexander says the funding crisis, as it has played out with hatcheries owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, underscores the need for a recurring funding measure that takes the funding debate away from agency heads. Multiple federal agencies are partners in a half-century-old agreement to replace fisheries displaced in the creation of hydroelectric dams, but they have no mandate to fund the hatcheries.

"Letters were actually sent to the Tennessee hatcheries informing them they would close," Alexander said.

That lit a small fire under bureaucrats, the public and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee. The senator reportedly brokered a deal with TVA for $900,000 a year to run the hatcheries through 2016 while a permanent funding solution for the hatcheries is worked out.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, FWS, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Georgia Department of Natural Resources hosted a public meeting in Knoxville on Tuesday to hear comments on long-term funding recommendations.

An Arkansas effort happening through federal legislative channels may be getting support for the first time from lawmakers from other states.

Alexander says an Oklahoma chapter of Trout Unlimited is attempting to bring that state's congressional delegation on board with U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, of Jonesboro, who sponsors a resolution that could become the National Mitigation Fisheries Coordination Act.