The Latest: California Empties Hatchery As Spillway Crumbles

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) – California state workers are using tanker trucks to evacuate millions of baby native salmon from a fish hatchery threatened by the crumbling spillway of a major dam. California Department of Water Resources officials say the torrents of mud, concrete and other debris from the Oroville Dam spillway on Thursday is threatening survival of the young salmon at the Feather River hatchery. Hatchery managers plan to truck the hatchery’s young salmon to another holding point farther away from the dam. The latest in a series of heavy storms in California is crumbling the concrete spillway at the Oroville dam, the state’s second-largest reservoir. Authorities say there is no immediate threat from the dam itself. The Feather River hatchery is vital for California’s native Chinook salmon, whose numbers have declined during what had been a five-year drought in the state. State officials say water could pour over an emergency spillway at Lake Oroville for the first time ever, a last-ditch alternative that they had been hoping to avoid. The California Department of Water Resources says that the reservoir’s emergency spillway likely will be used, perhaps, as soon as early Saturday.

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