The regional water authority uses an army of plant-munching grass carp to maintain the channels that irrigate the county’s farmland.
As summer approaches, the Imperial Irrigation District is gearing up for another battle with the weeds that infest its canals., since shallow canals and clear water create a welcoming environment for aquatic plant life. The weeds regularly clog up the system of gates and channels that ferry water to farms throughout Imperial County., a river fish native to North Vietnam and other parts of Asia.
But IID uses its own genetically-altered grass carp, which the district raises at a hatchery in El Centro. Hatchery workers place each batch of carp eggs under immense pressure during the fertilization process, creating young fish that have extra genetic material and are effectively unable to reproduce.
IID officials said they carefully blood test a certain number of carp from each batch to make sure all of them are sterile before any of the fish leave the hatchery. They also inject each fish with a tinyA particle counter, which Imperial Irrigation District hatchery workers use to test whether grass carp have been sterilized, sits on a desk at IID's grass carp hatchery in El Centro in Imperial County on May 7, 2024.
Once the eggs were fertilized and mixed with water, the hatchery workers had just four minutes to move them into another cylinder and apply 8,000 pounds of pressure using a mechanical press — all while keeping the eggs in constant motion so they wouldn’t suffocate. The district tested herbicides against hydrilla and tried using hydraulic excavators and other heavy machinery to scrape the canals.
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