Monday, December 13, 1999
Report touts dam removal benefits
Little Miami called repeat success story
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A national report on dam removal and river restoration being issued today includes the Little Miami as a repeat success story.
It focuses on the Jacoby Road Dam in Greene County that was removed on the cheap in 1997 through interagency cooperation and a landowner's welcome.
The total cash outlay — $10,000 — came from voluntary contributions to the Ohio Scenic Rivers License Plate Program.
“Getting rid of it has been a dream of mine for 20 years,” Milt Lord, a Yellow Springs resident and river preservationist, said Sunday. “Now, it's beautiful. It looks like God made it.”
The national report also praises the 1984 removal of the dam at Fosters downstream of the U.S. 22 bridge between Deerfield and Hamilton townships in Warren County.
Now, the Little Miami is “freely flowing water” from just below Waynesville, said Eric Partee, executive director of Little Miami Inc., in which Mr. Lord has long been active.
Upstream from Waynesville, however, too many dams remain, according to the report, “Dam Removal Success Stories: Restoring Rivers Through Selective Removal of Dams That Don't Make Sense.”
Sponsors of the report are American Rivers, Trout Unlimited and Friends of the Earth.
The Little Miami “shows that dam removal can be a low-cost solution to restoring a river, restoring fish and making the river a safer, more enjoyable place for people,” said national spokeswoman Sara Johnson for Trout Unlimited.
“Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the hundreds of dams, such as the Jacoby Road dam, that have been removed, despite the growing national policy debate,” said Shawn Cantrell, a national representative of of Friends of the Earth.
Jacoby Road dam was 8 feet high and 100 feet wide, built around 1910 to create a mill race to power a grist mill, said Bob Gable, who played a key part in the demolition plan as a scenic river coordinator for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The dam blocked fish migration and degraded conditions for bivalve mollusks. A partial breach in the concrete invited and endangered canoeists who snagged on exposed steel reinforcing bars.
Mr. Lord said unstable, accumulated debris was another danger to paddlers trying to haul canoes over the dam. “If they went through that pile, they were dead.”
Water quality tests further damned the dam and argued for a free-flowing river: Water below the barrier was some of the most biologically healthy on the entire 105-mile Little Miami and healthier than water above the dam.
With all of that, ODNR's the Scenic Rivers Program and the Little Miami Scenic River Advisory Council decided in 1996 Jacoby Road dam had to go.
Mr. Lord, a member of the council and Little Miami Inc., negotiated a landowner's permission for access to the dam and removal of the concrete. He also urged ODNR to let its Civilian Conservation Corps supply the labor.
The Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency granted vital permits and the CCC completed the work under ideal low-flow conditions in 10 days in late 1997.
The CCC also bought into Mr. Lord's idea of leaving a “slice of concrete” on each bank to remind passersby of what used to be there.
Ohio Department of Transportation's garage in Greene County hauled the debris to a local farmer who agreed to take the clean fill without charge.
Finally, CCC seeded the demolition site with wild flowers and grasses that Mr. Lord obtained.
The $10,000 covered rental of equipment that state agencies lacked, ODNR's Mr. Gable said.
Thirty-nine dams have been removed throughout Ohio, according to American Rivers, 23 since 1980.
One of the remaining Little Miami dams is above Clifton Gorge and still runs the Clifton Mill.
Remnants of another dam can be found in the gorge, he said, and another deteriorating grist mill dam is near Grinnel Road near Antioch College.
Remnants of two more dams can be seen near the former Ohio State Highway Patrol post in Greene County at U.S. 68, Mr. Lord said.
The southernmost dam on the Little Miami is at Corwin Road below Waynesville.
The national report counted more than 465 dam removals in 43 states. They were built to supply water and water power, hydroelectric power, flood control and recreation. They include earth-fill dams, concrete arch dams, masonry dams and timber crib dams. They were publicly or privately owned and some were abandoned.
Most were removed in the 1980s (92 dams) and 1990s (177 dams.) The largest number in any year — 29 — was removed in 1998.
The earliest removal for which the report has records was 1912.
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