If you drive down Highway 99, you might miss it. Hidden among the trees on the Mokelumne River is the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
"What happens here is when salmon and steelhead come up into the river to spawn, a portion of those fish stay in the river and spawn naturally and a portion are drawn into the hatchery and are spawned manually then are grown to a size to release in the bay or the delta," said Michelle Workman, a manager of Fisheries and Wildlife with the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
Workers get knee-deep into the manmade raceway waters picking out salmon for spawning and tagging them to watch their progress.
"In our hatchery, we have some infrastructure that helps with that. We have chillers so we can manage the temperature in the hatchery to just the right temperature that the eggs like for incubation. We have sediment filters and ultraviolet filters — all that help keep sediment and bacteria and disease off the eggs to increase survival," Workman said.
Cold water and gravel are a few the of key things for salmon survival.
Workman says in the past 10 years the average number of salmon at the hatchery has gone up to 11,000 fish per year and this year — a record-breaking salmon run with over 28,000 fish coming back to the Mokelumne River.
"We give the river enough gravel to move it on its own so when we have high flows, the river will actually distribute the gravel into prime spawning habitats," Workman said.
There has been mounting pressure from environmental groups for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to step up and save the salmon. This is why the governor is now proposing a plan to remove dams preventing salmon from returning to streams to lay eggs.
The Golden State Salmon Association says the proposed plan has its flaws.
"There's going to be benefits to salmon for sure with some of the hatchery production habit restorations but the problem is if we create all of these good things but we don't have the cold water flows that go into these projects we can have all the habit we want, we can do all of these great things but fish need water, salmon need cold water — these salmon families rely on this cold water and if they don't have the flows the fish just aren't going to have the biological necessity to survive," said Scott Artis, the executive director of the Golden State Salmon Association.
The proposal would also seek voluntary agreements with major farmers over how much water they can take out of the rivers and streams.
"This idea that this process would bring together dozens of water agencies with the state federal government to pull resources was good in a hypothetical situation because in reality for a decade California water agencies have promised this comprehensive water agreement to address these deteriorating conditions in the San Francisco Bay delta but instead we haven't got that," Artis said.
In addition to demolishing dams, Newsom is trying to bring attention to some of the $800 million he has signed off on in recent years for projects that return some creeks and streams to their natural state so that salmon can live there.
Watch more on ABC10 | Salmon population have new chance to thrive as California water drought resolves
