The Deputy Incident Commander in charge of clearing up the rock slide in the Fraser River near Big Bar says time is running out.

Steve Lemon says officials expect about a million fish to arrive at the site, northwest of Kamloops, by mid-August.

He says the top priority is to create a natural ‘fish passage’ through the area, ahead of this year’s salmon run.

“And that’s by dropping some rocks into the river, creating a system of pools and eddys and that’s kind of the least invasive, most environmentally friendly, the most cost effective frankly, and probably the most natural really for the fish to transport through.”

On NL Newsday, Lemon said that officials are also working on an engineered aluminum fish ladder, as a backup.

“And so that would be a constructed system to break the water up and allow the fish to get up it,” he noted. “We’ve got engineering plans on the go and we’re currently sourcing that out and just seeing how we could make that work in that environment.”

Other options to help get fish to spawning grounds upstream include the ‘salmon cannon’ or transporting fish by either trucks or helicopters. Officials have said that each option has its own pros and cons.

Lemon says when the water level drops later this year, officials hope to clear the site completely and restore the river to the previous state.

“That can’t be done with the current water levels,” Lemon noted.

The rock slide and subsequent five metre waterfall was discovered in late June, raising concerns about whether salmon migrating upstream will be able to reach their spawning grounds.

Equipment set up to monitor salmon at the site of a Fraser River rock slide also had to be temporarily removed because of heavy debris flow after flooding on the Chilcotin River.

(Photo via Government of BC)