The department proposes to anchor two barges to concrete tetrahedrons one mile east of Umatilla, 2,100 feet upstream from the Bonneville powerline crossing the river and at least 400 feet south of the navigation range. The net would be suspended from the 12-by-30 foot barges.

Objections will be considered only from the standpoint of navigation. Col. A. H. Miller district engineer, announced.

The nets are a part of a plan to test the effect of a plan to test the effect of the dam on fingerling salmon.

The question is : Can the young fish survive the passage through the dam? They must either tumble down the spillways or pass through the turbines on their spring trip to the sea.

The study is expected to attract nation-wide attention. It is the first of its kind on the Columbia river. At the same time another team will conduct similar tests near Pasco.

The study is financed by the army engineers but will be conducted by the Washington department of fisheries. Tests will continue through the spring of 1956.

Some 620,000 tiny marked salmon will be fed into the Columbia above and below the dam. They will be 45-day-old chinooks.

They will be fed into the turbines into the spillways and to be compared with the plants going through the dam, at the outlets of the turbines and spillways.

Besides those at Umatilla, nets will be placed 20 miles and 60 miles below the dam.

The ultimate aim of the test and other projects set up by army engineers is to find a way of guiding fingerlings around hazardous spillways.

A similar recent test on the Elwha river found 95 per cent of fingerlings surviving a spillway but another on the Baker river in Washington found 70 per cent were killed.

Dale Schoeneman, project leader, points out that every dam presents different conditions.

Fritz Kramer, resident biologist, said if any salmonids are killed it is probably those that tumble down the spillways. He said the turbine rotors turn so slowly at 60 revolutions a minute that “a cow could go through without getting hurt.”