U-of-I engineers called on to help solve salmon slaughter

University of Iowa engineers are answering the call to help rescue fish from being killed along a stretch of river in the northwestern U-S. U-of-I Engineering College associate dean Jacob Odgaard (yak’-ub oat’-gard) says salmon swimming through parts of Washington state are dying.Many of the salmon are getting killed along the Columbia River as they try to pass through the turbines of the power plants. Odgaard says the salmon mortality rate may be as high as 50-percent.Utilities have been ordered to build bypass facilities that somehow allow the fish to swim safely around the power plants. It’s those bypasses that the U-of-I engineers have been hired to design. Odgaard says they’re developing computer programs of fish as they move through water that behave much like a model airplane in a wind tunnel. He hopes to understand how the fish react to various stimuli and flow patterns of the water.The U-of-I is conducting the research thanks to two-point-one MILLION dollars in funding from the Public Utility District of Grant County, Washington.