Dix Corp., a longtime Spokane contractor, has started work on a $17 million portion of a fish-bypass project at Rocky Reach Dam, which is on the Columbia River near Wenatchee, Wash.


The company also is under way on a $345,000 gantry-crane rehabilitation project at Hungry Horse Dam, in Western Montana near Glacier National Park.


The fish-bypass project, which is being done for Chelan County Public Utility District No. 1, involves installing steel piping through which migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead can travel from a bay above the dam to a spot downstream. The system replaced a 7-year-old prototype, which Dix installed in the mid-1990s.


The portion of the project that Dix currently is working on involves putting in piping thats about 7 1/2 feet in diameter and is almost a mile long, company spokesman Mike Ferguson says. That piping traverses the dam spillway, then runs along the riverbank, emptying into the Columbia River about a third of a mile downstream from the dam.


That project also involves construction of a fish-inspection area, at which the health of fish can be monitored, and some concrete piers.


Another contractor previously constructed a portion of the new fish-bypass project.


Eileen Williams, contract administrator at Dix, says the Spokane company expects to complete work on that project in late March, in time for the spring migration of Chinook smolts.


For the Hungry Horse project, Dix is designing, manufacturing, and installing a new trolley system and electrical control system for the gantry crane there for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam.


Williams says that project currently is in design and manufacturing. Installation work is expected to start in mid-March, and the project is scheduled to be completed in early May.


Founded in 1946, Dix specializes in heavy-industrial construction and manufacturing and in installing industrial equipment.