MUSCATINE, Iowa — Conservationists in Muscatine are working to save a historic building from being torn down.
"It's a nice piece of history," Fairport Fish Hatchery manager Andy Fowler said. "it doesn't smell like fish in there anymore."
The pump house at Fairport Fish Hatchery has been in Muscatine since 1910. It used to be used for sorting and storing fish, but now it's vacant and owned by the state.
"We are having more and more floods in this area, and we also have some structural issues with the building," Fowler said."It just got to the point where we thought is it really worth it to put more money into the building."
The pump house was set to be torn down by the state, but one Muscatine group stopped demolition. Now, they are hoping to permanently stop demolition.
"We can't just tear things down without regards to the history of that and there has to be ways to save these things," member of Mussels of Muscatine Conservation organization, Terry Eagle said. "But, when things are set in motion, they are hard to stop."
Eagle is a member of the Mussels of Muscatine Conservation, an organization focused on putting mussels back into waterways to help clean them. The group is focused on restoring the pump house to help their work with the mussels.
"I would like to see the hatchery once again propagate mussels in a manor that we put them back in our waterways to contribute to clean water," Eagle said.
Eagle said the building needs to be labeled as a historic site in the state to qualify for grant money. They would use that money to restore the building, but he doesn't know how much restoration would cost.
"If we can save that, then we can use that building once again to point towards the clean water initiative," Eagle said. "We have a pearl of history that needs to be polished, and presented in a way that Iowa grows."
The pump house was added to Conservation Iowa's list of most endangered properties for the year.