Work begins on building new Coquitlam salmon hatchery

A ground-breaking ceremony was held Thursday for a new sockeye hatchery being built near the Coquitlam Lake Dam in the hopes of reviving the native salmon population.

The project is being led by the Kwikwetlem First Nation, which has struggled to restore the native sockeye population since the dam was first built across the CoquitlamRiver in 1913 to provide drinking water.

It is the most ambitious salmon restoration project undertaken by the nation in the last two decades.

"I don't know how to express this in any other way on how important this work is to me personally," said John Peters, Kwikwetlem Nation councillor during Thursday's ceremony.

"It is so necessary with global warming [] Yes there are a lot of challenges but just like the Kwikwetlem family, we're resilient."

Historically low salmon returns to the Fraser River into which the Coquitlam River flows have pushed sockeye stock to the brink.

For thousands of years, the Coquitlam River sustained the Kwiwetlem people with its abundant sockeye salmon.

It was so central to their culture, they called the waterway and themselves Kwikwetlem, meaning red fish up the river.

But the Coquitlam Dam, completed in 1913, blocked salmon from reaching their upper spawning grounds and made it practically impossible for fish trapped on the upper reservoir side of the dam to migrate out to the ocean.

Other factors have impacted Kwikwetlem salmon over the years, like gravel mines that muddied the water with silt, growing suburbs on either bank, global warming and, for the past two years, historically low salmon returns to the Fraser River.

The hatchery, which is being built in partnership with B.C.Hydro, Metro Vancouver and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, will be constructed below the dam. Its goal is to restore sockeye salmon back to the Coquitlamwatershed in the hope that one day the Kwikwetlem people will be able to fish again.

Peters was emotional seeing the beginning stages of the new hatchery. He said the project is a meaningful action towards truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

Coquitlam Lake is one of Metro Vancouver's main sources of drinking waterand also part of B.C. Hydro's power generation infrastructure, feeding Buntzen Lake and its powerhouse to the west via a four-kilometre tunnel.