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Have you ever heard of a herring warden?

Posted on May 1, 2008 | Filed Under River Renewal

Serena McClain, Associate Director of River Renewal
River Renewal, Restoring Rivers

Project monitoring is an important part of river restoration work. A solid pre- and post-dam removal monitoring plan can provide you with a reliable foundation on which to build your project and to document its successes. American Rivers has committed to funding a small percentage of monitoring work on some of the projects we are involved in through our partnership with the NOAA Community-based Restoration Program.

The town of Plymouth, Massachusetts has been working on an amazing suite of restoration projects aimed at restoring the historic fisheries of Town Brook, and American Rivers is proud to be working with an array of partners to restore historic fish runs that once sustained America’s earliest settlers. A key part of this project has been to hire a herring warden to monitor current fish populations on Town Brook.

If you’re like me, you might be wondering what exactly a herring warden does and what monitoring entails. To get some answers, I recently spoke with Alison Barrett, Town Brook Herring Warden.

Alison hard at work! S: What exactly is a herring warden?

Alison: I am in charge of monitoring herring runs (both blueback and alewife) on Town Brook. This involves doing three 10-minute herring counts (morning, afternoon, and evening) to provide the partnership data on how many fish are in the system. There is also an electric counter at the site that gets checked daily.

S: How does the electric counter work?

Alison: The counter is placed at the top of the fish ladder and has sensors attached to it. When the fish go through the tube at the top of the ladder, they hit the sensors. Different sensors register whether the fish are migrating upstream or downstream. Also, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has an underwater camera set up that even has infrared capabilities for night monitoring.

S: Speaking of the fish ladder, what specific site or sites are you monitoring?

Alison: While I’m monitoring the entire system, the primary site is the fish ladder at the Jenney Grist Mill. I also check the weir at the harbor and at the top of the Holmes Dam.

S: How many fish have you been seeing?

Alison: I’ve seen more than 20,000 this season. Last week, I was averaging roughly 400 herring per ten minute count.

S: How do you keep up, counting that many fish?

Alison: I have a clicker to help me keep count.

S: Do you monitor anything else?

Alison: Just water temperature at the top of fish ladder. I also note presence and absence of resident fish, such as large mouth bass.

S: What prompted you to take the job as herring warden?

Alison: I have lived here my whole life. My mom used to bring me to the brook to watch the herring runs. I’m now a biology major in college, and taking this job just seemed like the right fit.

Do you have questions about monitoring you’d like to ask? Feel free to post them in the comment section. Otherwise, stay tuned for future updates from the Town Brook monitoring front!

Community Tree Planting Event is Great Success

Posted on April 10, 2008 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Events, Mid-Atlantic, River Renewal

Chas Offutt, Director of Internet Strategy
Technology & Rivers

I think most will agree, one of the more exciting aspects of river conservation work is simply getting your hands dirty.

Grant it, it’s not for all, but for many picking up trash alongside a favorite river ensures measurable results (insert shameless plug for National River Cleanup). And, that kind of immediate satisfaction does indeed help to sustain those longer, and equally important, legislative battles.

As you know, a lot of our work is grounded – and enabled – by your participation. For example, some of those longer legislative battles are powered by our activists who travel to DC (insert second shameless plug for River Action Day).

But for greater localized action, we are fortunate to have many inspired field staff committed to community projects.

For example, last month Sara Deuling from our Pennsylvania Field office coordinated a “Mohnton Tree Planting Event�?. Sara recaps the successful effort (and slide show below):

When we arrived at the site before 10am, Larry Lloyd had already planted about 20 trees and had laid out a planting pattern with stakes for the trees. I provided an informational packet with photos of the evolution of the dam removal site.

The work started by planting the trees, which were segregated by the wetness desires: streamside, mid-bank, and upland. Once the trees were planted, about 20 feet on center, Larry identified all of the shrubs and directed the volunteers where to distribute them. Particular care was given to their wetness desires, shade preferences, mature heights and distribution across the site.

The shrubs were filled in between the tree species, with a final planting density of approximately 5’ on center. The group planted 365 trees and shrubs in total.

Once the site was cleaned up, the volunteers agreed that the site had undergone a major improvement and everyone headed home after a long day of hard work.

The site looks very natural and will provide substantial habitat benefits to birds, mammals and aquatic organisms. Some of the species planted included, Swamp white oak, Pin oak, Silver maple, Tulip poplar American sycamore, and 10 others.

A great deal of thanks and appreciation go out to Larry Lloyd, Berks Conservancy, Andrew Strassman, PA Natural Heritage Program, John Buzzar, PA Fish & Boat Commission, Fay & Molly, friends of John Buzzar, Jeremy Trexel, URS Corp., John Pittenger, URS Corp., and Chase Kelch, friend of John Pittenger.

Lessons From The Midwest Floods

Posted on April 7, 2008 | Filed Under Flood Protection, Great Lakes, Great Rivers, River Renewal

Rebecca Wodder
President

Disastrous floods. We experienced them back in December in the Pacific Northwest. Now, more recently, devastating floodwaters submerged parts of the Midwest.

We know that these kinds of rain storms and flooding will become more frequent and severe with global warming. How can communities prepare? What lessons can we learn?

One thing is certain: while engineered solutions like levees are necessary in some places, for the most part they are costly and can create a false sense of security. Levees can encourage unwise floodplain development and increase flood damage costs, while also destroying some of the natural features that prevent downstream flooding, as well as river access and fish and wildlife habitat.

Take the Missouri River. In 1993, the Missouri River flooded, in what local residents came to call the “Great Flood,�? one of the most destructive in the history of the Mississippi River basin. 70,000 people were evacuated, 50,000 homes damaged, nearly 50 people killed and a total cost in damage exceeding $16 billion dollars.

Following the floods in 1993, American Rivers helped convince the Federal Emergency Management Agency to use some of the disaster relief funds to help families move out of harm’s way. The agency worked in nine states to move roughly 10,000 homes and businesses to higher ground and to restore floodplains so that they could act as natural buffers. One village downriver from St. Louis picked up and moved two miles away to a site 400 feet above the Mississippi floodplain. When another flood hit the region two years later, these people were high and dry.

But this example of smart rebuilding is the exception, not the rule. In the very area that in 1993 was under 10 feet of water, developers have built strip malls, office parks and 28,000 new homes! In the St. Louis area, there’s been more building on the floodplain since 1993, than in its entire prior history.

The victims here are the families that invested their life savings in these homes, believing the promise of developers and local elected officials that they were safe. These false promises continue, and we owe the families in America’s river communities better.

We can’t rely on the engineered fixes of the past. While levees will still play a role in flood management, we need to focus on common-sense, cost-effective natural flood protection solutions like restoring wetlands, keeping people out of harm’s way in the first place, and allowing rivers to follow natural, meandering channels.

Our approach must be to work with nature and not against it. Working with nature, we can have clean, healthy rivers that make communities more resilient, more able to withstand droughts and floods in the years to come.

This post was first published on Treehugger.

NW dam removal update, and the breach of Montana’s Milltown Dam!

Posted on April 3, 2008 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Events, Northwest, River Renewal

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

An article I wrote for Open Spaces magazine about dam removal in the Northwest, “Ringing in new life for rivers” is now posted on their web site. Enjoy!

In recent dam removal news, the coffer dam at Montana’s Milltown Dam site was breached last Friday.

Check out the Milltown Dam Cam on the Clark Fork Coalition’s web site. American Whitewater also has a little video about the event.

Good intentions are no excuse for bad ideas

Posted on April 2, 2008 | Filed Under Hydropower, Northeast, River Renewal, Technology

John Seebach, Director
Hydropower Reform Initiative

About a third of my morning commute is on a great bike trail that runs from the Maryland suburbs into DC. Yesterday morning, I came up behind a guy who was riding slowly without his hands and weaving all over the trail. When I passed him, I saw the problem:

He was talking on his cell phone.

It struck me later that this was a great metaphor for some of the proposals for new energy development that have come across my desk in the past few months. The good news is that a whole lot of people are genuinely concerned about energy use and climate change, and they want to do something about it. Some try to drive less, others try to build power plants that will generate electricity without carbon emissions. The bad news is that good intentions don’t necessarily prevent reckless and selfish behavior.

Take, for example, Community Hydro, a for-profit hydropower consulting firm that focuses on small hydropower development, particularly in Vermont. At first glance, this might sound like a reasonable idea: Vermont has a lot of small dams that no longer really serve a useful purpose. Those dams can generate electricity without significant carbon emissions. What could go wrong?

Plenty. Leaving aside for the moment hydropower’s serious environmental impacts, there’s a reason why many of these sites haven’t been developed before: they won’t make money. It ain’t cheap to build a hydropower project, let alone maintain it for decades. At a larger dam, this is less of a problem: owners can generate more than enough energy - and income - to cover these costs. Many small hydropower dams barely produce enough power to stay afloat. All it takes is one mishap - a failed turbine, flood damage, a utility that wants to renegotiate a power contract, or an unsafe dam that needs repairs - to send a small hydropower project deep into the red.

If - like Community Hydro - you happen to be in the business of consulting with people who want to develop hydropower projects, this presents a problem. With most of the good sites already taken, how can you make bad sites worth developing? Skimping on generating equipment won’t save you any money in the long run, and cutting corners on dam safety is (I hope) a non-starter. Instead, Community Hydro is following in the time-honored tradition of energy developers everywhere (the same tradition, I might add, that got us into this climate mess in the first place): change the rules for protecting the environment so that they don’t apply to your business.

What rules? Simple: for hydropower operators, water is money. Most hydropower dams need to divert some water from the river into a canal or pipe that leads to a powerhouse downstream - often miles downstream - in order to get the most power out of the river. For a river, however, this water is life: if a dam owner takes too much water, the river runs dry. Over the years, state and federal governments have passed a number of environmental laws that balance the need for power production with the need for rivers to have water. When a dam owner receives permission to generate hydropower, it is conditional permission. Because rivers are a public trust resource (i.e. they belong to all of us) dam owners are also required to leave enough water in the river to protect fish, wildlife, and recreational uses like swimming, fishing, and boating.

This is exactly the point of “renewable” energy: we take energy without depleting the resource that provides us with it. It may make sense to add hydropower to some existing dams in Vermont. But if other sites won’t work unless we throw basic environmental standards out the window first, then they shouldn’t be developed.

Earlier this year, Community Hydro lobbied Vermont’s legislature for a bill that would have allowed the owners of small hydropower projects to take more than their fair share of water. Had the law passed (it didn’t, thankfully) many of Vermont’s rivers would have been deprived of their water. It would have been perfectly acceptable for a hydro operator to leave some rivers in a permanent state of severe drought. On other rivers, dam owners would be allowed cut flows to winter low-water levels during the critical spring season just when fish need higher water to spawn and rear their young. That’s hardly “green” energy.

With so many new and innovative renewable energy technologies being developed today, gutting environmental protections to make a 19th-century technology like small hydropower more profitable is both reckless and selfish. Arguing that small hydro should be exempt from environmental standards because it is “environmentally friendly” is like arguing that a particular model of car shouldn’t come equipped with air bags and seat belts because it has a solid crash-test rating. Especially if the person making the argument is trying to sell you the car.

A $1.2 million week

Posted on March 20, 2008 | Filed Under California, Dam Removal, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, Northwest, River Renewal

Serena McClain, Associate Director of River Renewal
River Renewal, Restoring Rivers

Did you ever have a really good week and just want to share it with others?

On Tuesday of last week we learned that we were awarded $700,000 to continue our NOAA Rivergrants program in FY09. Since 2001, we’ve provided both financial and technical assistance to more than 100 restoration projects across the country, and have reunited many communities with healthier rivers and streams.

Then, just three days later, we were awarded $500,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Growing Greener Grant Program to continue our work removing dams and restoring rivers statewide. In close partnership with PA DEP and the PA Fish and Boat Commission, our Free-Flowing Pennsylvania program has assisted in the design and construction of more than 60 dam removals since 2003.

The wonderful thing about having a week this good is that we really will be literally sharing it with others. There are just 11 days left to apply for the latest round of American Rivers Rivergrants funding! Check out our guidelines to figure out if your project might be eligible and download the application without delay!

Video: Increased flows give new life to Skokomish River

Posted on March 14, 2008 | Filed Under Events, Hydropower, Northwest, River Renewal

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

Exactly one week ago today, more natural flows surged down the North Fork Skokomish River when Tacoma Power released water from its Cushman hydroelectric project.

For over 50 years, the company had left just a trickle of water in the river below the dam — this harmed the entire river ecosystem and the well-being and culture of the Skokomish Tribe.

Here is video from the March 7 event — watch the restoration of the river’s flows.

Politics makes strange bedfellows

Posted on March 11, 2008 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Government Affairs, Northeast, Quotes, River Renewal

Serena McClain, Associate Director of River Renewal
River Renewal, Restoring Rivers

But, you know, it doesn’t make sense to guard a dam against a terrorist attack if it crumbles because no one has repaired it for the last 50 years. And this is my big lesson from Katrina, which is not a FEMA issue, but it is: If you let infrastructure go for 30, 40 or 50 years because you’re spending money on earmarks or other things, then in the end you’re going to have something that is going to cost you a hell of a lot more money, and worse, probably cost you some human lives.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

Last week Laura Wildman, our resident engineer and Director of River Science, left her post restoring rivers of the Northeast to fly down to D.C. and participate in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) lobby day.

American Rivers hasn’t always been known to jump into bed with ASCE. However, for the past two years, we have been working toward seeing the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act (S. 2238) become law. The bill, if passed, will provide states with funding to remove or repair high hazard dams.

With extreme weather events only expected to become more common and our nation’s dam infrastructure continuing to age, now is the time to heed the advice of our Secretary for Homeland Security. Let’s arm people not with weapons but with funding that could mean the difference between another Kaloko or a community who is able to restore their river and remove the threat of a deficient dam.

Sunset magazine feature on western rivers

Posted on February 25, 2008 | Filed Under California, Dam Removal, Global Warming, Northwest, River Heritage, River Renewal, Southwest, Water Conservation, Water Supply

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

The March 2008 issue of Sunset Magazine includes a story on the West’s rivers, featuring yours truly, and water experts from around the region.

It started back in the fall with a western water roundtable at Sunset’s office in California. They recorded the lively conversation and the magazine includes exerpts. To listen to the roundtable conversation in its entirety, click here.

The magazine also features three essays from writers Tobias Wolff (on the Skagit), Susan Orlean (on the Willamette) and Pam Houston (on the Colorado).

Kudos to Sunset for taking on such a big topic and handling it so well. I like how they include both information and inspiration, balancing the roundtable conversation with the three essays.

I hope the article helps readers appreciate our rivers a little more, and spurs some of them to take action.

Learn more: Read our Principles for Evaluating New Water Supply Projects (PDF)

National conservation leaders speak out on Columbia-Snake salmon

Posted on February 21, 2008 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Endangered Rivers, Global Warming, Northwest, River Renewal

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

The leaders of nine national conservation organizations sent a letter (PDF) to President Bush today, calling for a stronger salmon plan in the Columbia-Snake basin.

Here are some key excerpts:

The draft plan’s failure is particularly glaring when it comes to Snake River salmon populations and is best illustrated by the plight of Snake River sockeye. Only four of these fish, which spawn in the Rocky Mountains 900 miles upstream from the Pacific Ocean and nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, returned last year.

The draft also fails to adequately analyze, let alone address, the likely effects of global warming on ocean and river conditions, and hence salmon. Information on the likely effects of global warming on ocean conditions and river runoff and temperature is readily available but the draft plan fails – inexplicably – to analyze or address this information.

With proper planning, lower Snake River dam removal can be a “win-win�? for salmon, local communities, and the climate. The dams can be removed in an economically and environmentally responsible manner. Their energy can be replaced by cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy with no carbon emissions. The navigation afforded by these dams can be replaced with upgraded rail and Columbia River barge facilities, and the irrigation provided from one of the reservoirs can continue by extending intake pipes to the free-flowing river.

American Rivers, Clean Water Action, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Greenpeace USA, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Trout Unlimited signed the letter.

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