Rebuilt for the Future: Setzer Hatchery project emphasizes reliability, flood protection

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Rebuilt for the Future: Setzer Hatchery project emphasizes reliability, flood protection

Signage at the turnoff for the Setzer hatchery notes that construction is ongoing and will continue through 2028. Kyle Perrotti photos

Construction has begun on the long-planned renovations to the Bobby N. Setzer Hatchery near Brevard, and contractors are saying the project is on schedule for a full-reopening early next year.

During a tour for local media last week, contractors and state officials provided an inside look at the construction. Stacks of piping, totaling about 2.5 miles line the site of future trout raceways, heavy equipment moves rock and laborers dig and survey.

Right now, there are about 40 workers on-site, but at its peak, that number will balloon to about 125.

Design work for renovations to the hatchery, originally built in 1950, began in 2018 and construction was supposed to start in January 2025. However, when Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024, plans changed. While the Setzer hatchery didn’t sustain heavy damage from Helene, as it had during Tropical Storm Fred in 2021, the Armstrong State Fish Hatchery in Marion was all but destroyed. This meant that until repairs on that facility were completed, the Setzer hatchery had to remain operational in whatever capacity was available to ensure some continuity of stocking. Work on Armstrong was completed late last year, and demolition of the old Setzer raceways began in February.

The state Fish Production Supervisor David Deaton told media on-hand that the original timeline for completing the renovations was 18-24 months from beginning work, and that still tracks.

“This is a very extensive project, and there’s been a lot of work going on. We always run into hiccups here and there, but so far, we’ve been really good,” Deaton said.

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As construction begins in earnest, heavy equipment was seen throughout the site last week moving dirt and rocks in preparation to construct the new raceways.

Sitting on 44 acres of national forest land, the hatchery operates through a special use permit and stocks about 600,000 trout every year in Western North Carolina counties, a significant proportion of the nearly 1.1 million stocked statewide every year. A 2023 report released by the N.C. Wildlife Commission put the economic impact of the recreational fishing industry in the state’s western 26 counties at $1.38 billion, a 360% percent surge since the 2015 report. Many local outfitters and other businesses rely on anglers to keep the doors open.

To mitigate stocking reductions amid the Armstrong and subsequent Setzer projects, the Wildlife Resources Commission has purchased trout from private hatcheries, an avenue it continues to pursue, and bought the formerly private Glady Fork Hatchery in Transylvania County.

Deaton said the new facility will greatly improve Setzer’s stocking capacity to keep up with the rising demand. In addition, it will feature enhanced infrastructure meant to improve reliability and minimize corrective maintenance. Previously, raceways were out in the open, meaning herring and other birds of prey could pluck fish out of the water, but the new design provides the protection of gates on the side and a roof to protect trout from avian predators.

Senior Project Manager Cameron Jones, with the general contractor Cooper Tacia out of Raleigh, said that because the 400-foot raceways are gravity-fed via a 30-inch intake line from the Davidson River, there is no need for bulky pumps that can fail and require costly fixes. In addition, instead of featuring valves that can be operated remotely, valves are all operated manually, which also improves reliability and reduces repair headaches.

“The way that the system was designed is such that there’s as few moving parts as possible on the system, because parts break. They’re expensive to maintain. They’re expensive to fix,” he said. “So with everything being mostly gravity, you’re letting mother nature do the work for you,” Jones said.

Jones added that in the wake of Fred and Helene, the likelihood of future floods was also factored into the design.

“Essentially, what we’re rebuilding into this is flood resiliency. It could happen again,” he said. “Hopefully we never see anything like that happen again, but it certainly could happen, so what we’re going to do is, as we’re building it, it stays basically the same, but there are more resilient items.”

Jones said Cooper Tacia hasn’t built a hatchery, but the company does have experience on projects featuring similar elements, such as wastewater treatment plants. The company is trying to be conscientious of sustainability throughout the construction process, both with the environment and economy in mind. For example, workers are repurposing old concrete collected during the demolition in the new construction. In addition, he noted that local subcontractors are being used where possible, such as Teraflex, which has an office in Waynesville.

Crews have used ground-penetrating radar to make sure they know what’s under the earth they’re working, things like old pipes that could create problem for construction. However, Jones noted that something else working in their favor is that the hatchery built in the 1950s was constructed atop a fill site, meaning they are building on non-native soil unlikely to feature hidden obstacles below the surface.

Cameron Jones, right, highlights changes to the hatchery.

“It’s actually been brought in and built up. So the ability for us to work through that is a lot better than getting in native soil, because it’s already been moved around. It’s already been broken off. It’s just easier to work,” Jones said.

The media visit last week, coincided with Construction Safety Week, something that Jones highlighted in his conversation with reporters. Throughout the week, workers had received extra training.

“Wednesday, we had excavation and shoring training. Today, we had equipment training. Tomorrow, we’re going to have electrical training, hazard training … And then Friday, we’re actually going to have an evacuation drill for the entire site. We’ll time it. And the reason that we’re doing that is if we have adverse weather environments, or there were to be some kind of a catastrophic incident on site, we want to be able to make sure that we can gather everyone in one spot — count all their heads, make sure that everybody moves to one place — so that if there is any rescue or anything like that needs to happen, we’re out of their way and we can get them there quickly,” Jones said.

While construction should be completed by early 2028, the part of the facility that fosters eggs and raises fish up to the fingerling stage will be operable ahead of that date, meaning the Setzer hatchery will be ahead of the game and should be ready to start populating the raceways once they’re up and running. While the new facility features an increased capacity, it isn’t clear whether that will immediately translate to stocking numbers higher than what was seen at peak operation of the Stetzer and Armstrong hatcheries prior to Fred and Helene.

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