Posted on 09/22/2004 1:24:44 PM PDT by neverdem
Tucked away in Orange County, N.Y., a 90-year-old dam will start coming down today. Piece by piece, a team of engineers from the Nature Conservancy and the Army Corps of Engineers will begin removing major parts of the Cuddebackville Dam on the Neversink River as part of a painstaking effort to save an endangered mussel that is blocked by the dam from going upstream.
The project is the first in New York history in which a dam is being removed for purely environmental reasons. It also signals a change of purpose for the Army Corps of Engineers, which has spent more than a century creating dams and now is just beginning to remove them.
"This is a pretty symbolic occasion for us," said Brian J. Mulvenna, project manager from the Army Corps. He said the project is the first in which the corps has worked with a nonprofit organization since a federal law was passed in 1999 allowing such partnerships.
"It also shows a changing of the guard at the corps," Mr. Mulvenna said, "as the older generation of dam supporters give way to a younger group who are often dam opponents."
Built in 1915, the dam diverted water down the Delaware and Hudson canal system to turn turbines at a power plant in Cuddebackville, about 65 miles northwest of New York City. But the dam became a vestige in the mid-1940's when the power plant was shut down as modern power lines were built to draw electricity from farther away.
"We've come to realize the ecological costs of tapping nature for our purposes, and where possible we've started paying Mother Nature back," said George E. Schuler, director of the Nature Conservancy's Neversink Program. The project will remove one of two dams located on either side of an island that splits the Neversink River. Mr. Schuler explained that the Nature Conservancy has no plans to remove a separate dam on the northeast side of the island because most fish swim up the southwest side.
The depth of the river, about four feet, and its speed will not change when the dam is removed, Mr. Schuler said. But American shad and native brook trout will again be free to swim upstream in the Neversink River, where fly-fishing became popular in the United States. But the biggest beneficiary will be the dwarf wedgemussel, a tiny freshwater mussel no bigger than a quarter and one of the most endangered species in upstate New York. While the wedgemussel, which helps purify the water, does not swim upstream, host fish carrying its larvae do.
The removal of the steel-reinforced concrete dam, 6 feet tall and 125 feet across, is expected to be completed by the end of October at a cost of about $2.2 million. The conservancy is paying for 35 percent, and the corps is paying for the rest.
The project, begun in July 2003, is a feat of civil engineering and ecological planning. Many dams are demolished using explosives, but Mr. Schuler decided against that approach because of the damage it would cause to the local habitat. Instead, his team has built a temporary dam, or cofferdam, upstream, to divert the water to the other side of the island and enable workers to move backhoes and large hydraulic hammers in front to chip away at the concrete.
The fish and mussels from the side of the island that is now dry were relocated upstream. Once the dam is removed, the streambed will be restored and water will be released from behind the cofferdam. A second, smaller, cofferdam was built to block an artificial trench that divides the island in two. The trench used to direct water from the southwestern side of the island to a canal system on the northeastern side.
"American dams are not the pyramids of Egypt, and they were not meant to stand forever," said Amy Souers Kober, a spokeswoman for American Rivers, a conservation group based in Washington, D.C. "Many states are starting to realize that river restoration starts with dam removal since that is the only way to open the flow to aquatic life."
Ms. Souers Kober said there are plans to remove an estimated 60 dams in 14 states and in the District of Columbia in 2004. Only four of these dams ever supplied electricity, and they have been off line for years, she said. Of the 77,000 dams higher than 6 feet across the country, fewer than 2,500 generate electricity, she noted. Most were built to run mills that are now obsolete, to control floods or to create water supplies or recreational lakes.
While sometimes providing useful services, dams drown valuable habitats under reservoirs and can create inhospitable downstream conditions for fish and wildlife.
More than 145 dams nationwide have been removed since 1999, only one of them in New York. But until now, none were removed in New York to help the environment.
"In many places, aging dams have become major public hazards and legal liabilities," said Mr. Mulvenna, from the corps. "Each one of those that we take out is one less headache for us in the future."
Tara Engberg for The New York Times
Evan Obrien, a park visitor in Cuddebackville, N.Y., looking at a dam that is being taken apart so that the dwarf wedgemussel, an endangered species, can go upstream. The Nature Conservancy and the Army Corps of Engineers are handling the project.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
What did the fish say when it hit the concrete?
DAM
it's a lot more fun if ya blast!
I have a better idea: 
Let me know if you want on or off my New York ping list.
The Army Corps has done this several times in the past. The one I remember was East Machias, Maine.
Yeah, well, it opens the flow to floods, too.
This is one of the typical off-the-wall reasons for eliminating dams that has been perpetrated by the loony left.
If the "endangered mussels" were carried upstream by fish anyway, a fish ladder would do as much as taking out the entire dam.
i tend to agree.
Ohh, but where would be the nepotic kickback fun in that?
ping
Why not let the 10th Mountain Div. get some practice in and blow that thing on an afternoon exercise?
So let me see if I got this straight:
The dam has been there for 90 years, but this mussel or whatever is just now endangered?
And getting rid of the dam is going to unendanger it?
Something fishy going on here...
"I want mussels!" - Dianna Ross
Well with these idiots realise that mankind is nature. We're no different from beavers building a dam to suit their own purposes.
The idea of gathering and depositing a ton or so of mussels upstream never occurs to the Nature Conservancy or the Army Corps of Engineers. Too simple
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.