New impetus for reconfiguring Imperial dam
By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist
A couple of weeks ago, at a news conference held on the opening day of the Wal-Mart FLW Bass Tournament, Tom Marshall, Director of the Fish America Foundation, gave Plattsburgh Mayor Dan Stewart a check for $5000. Stewart announced that most of that money would be used for a study to look into the feasibility of lowering, or even removing, Imperial Dam, three miles upstream from the mouth of the Saranac River.
I checked with the mayor after that news conference for confirmation, and he said, "Yes."
This was the first time I had heard an elected official publicly commit to doing something with that dam, other than just letting it stand there.
To understand why such a study could prove significant, we first have to take a look back at the history of the dam. Richard Frost, author of "Plattsburgh, New York -- First Century," told me that, from his research, Imperial Dam was built in 1903, but there may have been other dams near that spot before the current one. The Imperial Dam, made of concrete and rock, is 30 feet high and 150 feet wide. Where there were once rapids and forest is now a sizable backwater. In the past century, considerable sediment has built up behind the dam.
When the Imperial Dam was first constructed, the last thing on the builders’ minds was the environmental repercussions of such an impoundment. It was the height of the Industrial Revolution, and profits were the bottom line. For decades afterwards, Imperial Dam served as a source for hydro power and its flow used for processing water.
But Imperial Dam also blocked the upriver migration of fish, in particular landlocked salmon and, in later years, steelhead, a type of rainbow trout, from spawning beds beyond. There are an estimated 15 miles of potential salmon habitat upriver from the dam.
For more than a decade, the Lake Champlain Chapter of Trout Unlimited and other concerned individuals pushed to have a fish ladder -- a series of raised pools going progressively upward -- built to allow salmon and steelhead to get upriver. This initiative coincided with the experimental lamprey control program that was in full swing and was successfully reducing sea lamprey numbers in Lake Champlain and its feeder streams. That temporary control program ended in 1997, and since then, lamprey numbers have rebounded. We are still waiting for a permanent lamprey control plan to start.
In the late 1990’s, New York State voters approved an environmental bond act; a million and half dollars were earmarked for acquiring land on which to build a fish ladder at Imperial Dam. After numerous bureaucratic and regulatory holdups, the fish ladder project remains in limbo, frustrating local anglers and politicians alike.
It was during this period that New York Rivers United, an anti-dam organization, proposed tearing down the Imperial Dam. Mike Lagree, President of the Lake Champlain Chapter of Trout Unlimited, remembers that proposal this way: "At first we were skeptical. Some members of the local TU finally got to the point of asking, ‘Why not lower or take it (the dam) down? That makes as much sense as waiting for a fish ladder to be built.’"
Bill Wellman, another local TU member who is on the Plattsburgh Mayor’s Waterfront Committee, realizes there will be some questions that need be to answered from the feasibility study before any action can be taken.
One concern is the sediments. There was a preliminary study done years ago, but Wellman says," Those findings are no longer valid. We need an updated study."
Then there is the question of whether the dam should be lowered or removed entirely. Wellman favors lowering it. "Leaving some of the dam will block sea lamprey movement upstream, yet salmon will be able to get over the lower barrier. The scientific name for Atlantic salmon is Salmo salar, which means ‘the leaper.’ These salmon can jump eight feet."
Another factor to be considered is the future of the mill and if the backwater would be needed by yet another company. If not, the removal would have to be done in such a way as to not create a disturbance downstream.
If most of the water from Imperial Dam was released, what would the land, after a century underwater, look like, and how long would it take to re-vegetate? Wellman says in two or three years, vegetation begins to take hold and grow. The remains of the backwater of the old Fredenburg Falls Pulp Mill Dam one mile upstream from Imperial, however, seems to be taking longer.
In a 1995 Press-Republican article about that dam by Will Rice, then a Plattsburgh State student, he described what he found this way: "What lies beyond (the old dam) is a yellow marshland that has not been able to readjust to its new environment. When compared with the river bed a few hundred yards downstream (and not dammed) which is full of foliage, the banks above the dam look barren except for swamp grass.
For some, however, the wait for revegetation at Imperial Dam couldn’t be any longer than the numerous delays local anglers and interested parties have had to endure over the past decade waiting for this section of the Saranac River to become a more aesthetically pleasing sight and a more productive fishery.