For five weeks starting Wednesday , the public can file into a viewing room at the Robert E. Barrett Fishway just below the Connecticut River dam here and watch nature at work. The Holyoke Gas & Electric Department, which - as owners of the hydroelectric dam since 2001 - completed its $4 million upgrade of its fish lift in 2005. In all, about 12,000 people visit the fishway to watch American shad, Atlantic salmon, sea lamprey, striped bass, blueback herring, American eel and short-nosed sturgeon pass through the two fish lifts.
The station opens to the public on May 9, and will remain open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily for five weeks of free viewing. The lifts, two hydraulic elevators that rise 30 feet, haul the shad and their aquatic cousins from below the dam to the river above. The number of fish passing through the lift, according to HG&E Marketing Coordinator Calvin Ellis, is about 10,000 a day, or about 250,000 a year, about two-thirds of which are shad, Ellis said.
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