Demolition of First of Three West Fork Dams Underway
Charleston Gazette Mail
29 March 2016
By Rick Steelhammer, Staff Writer
WEST MILFORD — A dozen people stood on the deck of the W.Va. 27
bridge over the West Fork River at the eastern entrance to this
Harrison County town last Tuesday and gazed at a spot a few
hundred feet upstream, where the operator of an excavator-mounted
jackhammer pounded out chunks of concrete from 94-year-old West
Milford Dam.
“The dam was beautiful, but this will open up so much more of the
river to fishing,” said Chad Albright, who lives a short distance
upstream of the dam and was among those watching it being
demolished. “Fish need water that’s free-flowing and
well-oxygenated. Before this, the only place you could catch fish
in this section of river was below the dam. And this will open up
so much more of the river to recreation. My family’s already
looking into buying kayaks.”
“There goes our old swimming hole,” said another onlooker, Kathy
Rupe Garvin of West Milford. “Before there were swimming pools,
the pool behind the dam was where we would go to swim. There was a
tree with a swing hanging off a branch and steps going up the
trunk to reach it. We would swing out, jump off, and swim to the
dam. Since long before I was born back in 1950, it’s been a part
of the lives of the people who have lived here. I’m crying tears
to see it go.”
After seven years of planning, grant-writing, regulatory
check-offs, public hearings and heated controversy, West
Virginia’s first stream enhancement dam removal project is
underway. Demolition of the West Milford Dam will be followed in
coming weeks by the removal of two other non-functioning former
West Fork water supply dams — the 105-year-old Two Lick Dam and
the 111-year-old Highland Dam.
The Hartland Dam, which continues to supply Clarksburg’s water
system, will remain standing and receive an improved fish passage
channel. The $400,000 project will reconnect nearly 40 miles of
river for fish, mussels and other wildlife species, while
eliminating safety hazards caused by the undertow effect
accompanying standing waves created at the downstream base of each
dam. Water quality will also be improved by having huge
accumulations of sediment — some of it contaminated by pollutants
— now found in the pools behind the dams, gradually flushed away
to uncover the stream’s stone-cobbled bottom, allowing
water-filtering freshwater mussels and aquatic insects favored by
fish to thrive.
“Some of the dams have three miles of ponded, fairly stagnant
water behind them,” said John Schmidt, supervisor of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service’s West Virginia Field Office. “Removing these
dams will provide miles of continuous riffle and pool habitat that
will improve recreational fishing and boating, allow mussels and
other wildlife in and along the river to flourish and improve
water quality.” Smallmouth bass and muskellunge, the state’s
largest sport fish species, are particularly expected to benefit
from the dam removals, according to Schmidt.
On Tuesday, as the excavator worked its way across the width of
the eight-foot-tall West Milford Dam, the 384-acre-foot pool
behind it slowly continued to recede. After the dam was first
breached on Monday, the water level in the pool dropped about two
feet. By mid-day Tuesday, another six inches of the pool had
drained, bringing it that much closer to its original channel.
Upstream of the demolition site, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and Division of Natural Resources personnel took to the river in
canoes to rescue mussels stranded in the newly exposed stream
banks and collect trash as it emerged from the backwater.
“The West Fork was once one of the best mussel streams in the
United States,” said DNR Wildlife Diversity biologist Janet
Clayton, who heads the state’s mussel monitoring and restoration
effort, shortly after her crew rescued a marooned ladyfinger
mussel from a newly drained section of the West Milford pool.
“Five species historically known to have been here are now listed
as endangered.” While more than 20 species of mussels could be
found in the West Fork before the dams were built, only a
half-dozen now live in the stream, including the endangered
snuffbox mussel. “Anything we can do to restore the natural flow
of the river will help them help them recover,” Clayton said.
In order to flourish, mussels need a sediment-free streambed
consisting of cobbled rocks and gravel, and a sustained population
of fish to serve as hosts during the development of mussel larvae.
Once mussel eggs advance to the larval stage, they attach
themselves to the fins and gills of fish, and form cysts in the
host’s flesh in which they develop into microscopic juveniles
before dropping into the water and, hopefully, landing in a site
with suitable habitat for continued growth. With host fish being
able to travel through more territory with the removal of the
dams, juvenile mussels will be able to establish new colonies and
increase their population and range in the West Fork and its
tributaries.
“Since mussels have such a precarious life cycle, it will take
decades for the population to approach what it once was,” said
Clayton. An enhanced mussel population has practical, as well as
aesthetic, benefits. “Each mussel filters impurities out [of] five
gallons of water each day,” Clayton said.
“And they live a long time,” added DNR biolgist Craig Stihler, who
heads the state’s endangered species efforts. With life spans
averaging 10 to 40 years, mussels establishing new colonies in the
West Fork “will be filtering water for decades.”
About one mile upstream from Clayton, Stihler and their
mussel-gathering crew, Nick Millett of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service was leading a canoe-borne crew picking up newly emerged
trash.
“We got a mud-covered TV that must weigh 150 pounds, but so far,
we haven’t seen as much trash as we thought we would,” Millett
said.
On Saturdays, until the newly exposed shoreline is cleared of
debris, Fishing Report WV and the Department of Environmental
Protection’s REAP program will team up with volunteers to continue
the trash removal effort behind the West Milford Dam.
The dam removal project now underway traces its roots to a 2000
boating accident at the Highland Dam, during which three people
drowned when their canoe was swept into a hydraulic roller at the
base of the dam. Similar undertow-producing standing waves are
found at the other non-gated, run-of-river West Fork dams slated
for demolition, all owned by the Clarksburg Water Board. In the
wake of the drownings, the water board looked at structural
solutions to improve safety and reduce the agency’s liability,
including the removal of the three no longer used water supply
dams. But instead of removing the dams, the board opted to keep
the dams in place and spend more than $250,000 to modify two of
the dams by placing rock along their downstream bases in an effort
to impede the formation of hydraulic rollers.
Since then, the water board has spent an average of about $160,000
annually to cover liability and maintenance costs for the dams. In
an effort to dam that cash flow, the water board began working
with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2008 to explore the
possible removal of the dams. After an environmental assessment of
the concept was completed in 2010, the water board voted to
authorize the federal agency to proceed with developing a dam
removal plan. A $140,000 grant started the planning and permitting
process, and last year, Fish and Wildlife secured a $400,000 grant
to complete the dam removals.
Since the dams and the tranquil pools they created had been iconic
elements of the landscape along the West Fork between Weston and
Clarksburg for more than a generation, many residents of the area
took issue with their removal. Last July, a new officer elected to
the water board provided the swing vote needed to explore the
possibility of turning the three dams over to the Harrison County
Commission, which had expressed an interest in keeping them in
place. After a public meeting; an analysis of possible
alternatives to demolishing the dams, which ranged from $330,000
to $450,000 for two of the three structures; a look at continued
liability issues; and Fish and Wildlife’s reluctance to drop a
project that had already been planned and funded, with more than
$140,000 already spent; the water board and the county commission
late last year “decided to change directions and take us up on our
standing offer to remove the dams,” Schmidt said.
While the West Fork dam removal project is a first for West
Virginia, more than 1,000 unused or outdated dams have been
removed at sites across the nation, including 310 in the past five
years, to improve recreation and wildlife habitat. Under the West
Fork project, stream access at the former dam sites will be
improved.
“Here, we’ve cleared out shrubbery and built a parking area, and
it will be a lot easier for people to get down to the river than
it is now,” said Callie McMunnigal of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, who was overseeing work at the West Milford Dam. “All the
concrete from the dams will be crushed into gravel for use at boat
access points and on Harrison County trails and the Clarksburg
Fitness Trail.”
It is expected to take about two months to complete the demolition
of the three dams. Future dam removal projects are being
considered for a site on Hackers Creek, a West Fork tributary, and
for the Worthington Dam on the West Fork in Marion County.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazette.com,
304-348-5169, or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.