BELCHERTOWN — Gov. Charlie Baker visited a Belchertown fish hatchery Friday to hail a new pipeline and hydropower turbine that will bring water from the Quabbin Reservoir, producing renewable energy and improving trout production.
Groundbreaking shovels, an excavator and country music set the scene as some 50 people gathered outside to hear Baker and other state officials speak about the $4.4 million project. It will supply the McLaughlin Fish Hatchery, which produces 50 percent of the state’s trout, with six million gallons of water from the Quabbin Reservoir each day, according to Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Director Fred Laskey.
The hatchery stocks trout in nearly 500 rivers, streams, lakes and ponds throughout the state for recreational anglers.
“This is one of those things that makes the commonwealth special,” Baker said. “This opportunity we have to come up with enormously creative ways to preserve our heritage and support our environmental resources and assets, and to create that sense of joy in the outdoors that’s so important.”
The McLaughlin Hatchery, the largest of five in the state, produces about 225,000 pounds of brook, brown and rainbow trout annually.
Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matt Beaton called the project a “fusion of energy and environmental affairs” because it supports renewable energy and increases trout production.
The pipeline, 20 inches in diameter, will begin at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s Brutsch Water Treatment Facility in Ware, cross Route 9 into Belchertown and parallel East Street down to the hatchery, according to a statement from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Because gravity will push the water through the pipeline, the need for energy to pump the water will be eliminated.
Along the way, the rushing water will power a 60-kilowatt hydropower turbine.
The pipeline and turbine will reduce the hatchery’s electrical demand by 588,000 kilowatt hours each year and produce 444,000 kilowatt hours of renewable energy annually, to be exported to the power grid, Laskey said.
Additionally, trout production is predicted to improve as a result of the pipeline because it will provide consistently cold water temperatures from deep in the Quabbin Reservoir, which trout prefer.
Water pumped directly to the hatchery now comes from the Swift River. In hot summer months, warm river temperatures negatively affect trout production. With the colder water, the length of trout produced at the hatchery could increase by as much as 2 inches, Beaton said.
The project is a collaboration among the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Department of Fish and Game, the Department of Energy Resources and Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and MassWildlife.
It was funded by $2.2 million in state environmental bond funds and $1 million from Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, among other state departments and programs.