Pleasant Lake/Casco Hatchery Pipeline Replacement Project

Week of July 10, 2017

Construction began July 10th on a new water intake pipe for the Casco Fish Hatchery. During the project there will be a pipeline floating on the southern end of Pleasant Lake. The floating pipeline will be marked appropriately to alert boaters.

The on-water construction phase is expected to take three weeks and completed by July 31. During this time, workers will be working around the water assembling the pipeline.

A considerable amount of preconstruction work is completed already on the pipeline and by utilizing an expanded construction crew, this will diminish the amount of on-water construction time.

The pipe will be assembled at the outlet dam and incrementally extended into the water. For safety purposes, the pipe will be floating during construction in the headway speed zone, approximately 200 feet from shore. It will later be moved into position and lowered to the lake bottom.

The new intake pipe is replacing the original intake line, which stopped functioning last summer. While the diminished water flow did not interrupt hatchery production last year, failure to replace the intake this season would mean a lost year of production.

The Casco Hatchery raises landlocked salmon, brook trout, rainbow trout, and brown trout which are stocked throughout the state. It is the only state hatchery that produces rainbow trout and the Sebago Lake salmon strain.

The Casco Hatchery, established in 1954, produces over 85,000 catchable fish annually.

Over 300,000 people fish in Maine each year, injecting $319 million into Maine’s economy annually.