Netting determines efficiency of barrier net

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05/17/08 Brian Mulherin – Daily News Staff Writer
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The consulting firm of Lawler, Matusky and Skelly is at work netting in the vicinity of the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant to test the efficiency of the power plant’s barrier net.

The gill netting is a required part of a settlement agreement between the state of Michigan, Consumers Energy and Detroit Edison. The power companies pay the consultants to net twice a week both inside and outside the barrier net.
“From April 15 to October 15, they do two nettings a week, weather permitting. They do four inside the barrier and four outside — two deep, two shallow,” DNR Fisheries Biologist Supervisor Tom Rozich said.

“They take the in-vs.-out and calculate an efficiency number,” Rozich said. “Based on that number on the end of the year, Consumers and Detroit Edison make a payment for fish mortality.”

“The license standard is 80 percent for gamefish — salmonids and yellow perch, 85 percent for large forage fish like rainbow smelt and alewives.”

Rozich said in 2007, the barrier net was calculated to be 80 percent effective at preventing gamefish over five inches long from entering the turbines and 94 percent effective for preventing large forage fish from entering.

“Every year it varies,” Rozich said. “It goes anywhere from a low of 83.1 percent to a high of 98.9 percent.

“It depends on how many storms we have, how many holes are punched in the net, how diligent they are in repairing them.”

Rozich said indications are that the net is in good shape.

“I think they’re doing a good job in maintaining the net,” Rozich said. “I think, as the numbers show, they’re doing a good job preventing (turbine) entrainment and mortality,”

The netters are rarely observed because they set nets very late in the day and pull them very early in the morning.

“They set those nets, the soak time isn’t that long,” Rozich said. “They set them at night, they pull them as early in the morning as they can to avoid mortality. Any gamefish alive, they note the length, the approximate weight and release them.”

Gamefish killed by the netting are filleted, frozen and delivered to the Benzie County Council on Aging, Rozich said.