Dam removal will improve fish habitat

A cutting torch and sledgehammer were among the tools of choice Monday as work continued to remove a sheet metal dam pounded into the bottom of the Des Plaines River more than 70 years ago.

With a portable dam diverting most of the flow, workers navigated shallow, murky water and chunks of ice to get at the old sheet piling dam at a bend in the river at the Ryerson Conservation Area near Deerfield.

“They’re actually cutting it below the surface of the river bed,” said Jamie Geils, project engineer for Wills Burke Kelsey Associates, the St. Charles firm overseeing the $500,000 project for the Lake County Forest Preserve District.

The dam will be cut about a foot below the river bed, removed in sections and replaced with boulders and river rock. Canoeists and kayakers no longer will need to portage at that point.

The Ryerson dam is the first of three along the Des Plaines the district wants to remove as a means to improve fish habitat, reduce flooding upstream, enhance safety and recreational uses and restore the environment.

Half of the 125-foot-long dam was removed last week, and the other half could be history within a week.

The project has been in the planning stage for two years and is a recommended action of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the upper Des Plaines River flood reduction study.

“The ecology gets better (and) we do provide a benefit for flood storage and recreation,” said Jim Anderson, the district’s natural resource manager. “This is a good first step.”

Steel magnate Edward L. Ryerson, for whom the conservation area is named, bought property and built a cabin in the woods for weekends and summer use in 1928. The dam likely was installed in the 1930s near the cabin to enhance the natural setting, according to Diana Dretske, collections coordinator for the Lake County Discovery Museum.

“The dam really was to create more of an ambience for the family,” she said.

The Ryerson dam was failing and causing erosion on the north bank of the river as well as presenting a hazard for canoeists and kayakers, according to the forest preserve district.

Dam removal across the country has increased in recent years. American Rivers, a conservation group, forecast 2011 as representing a renaissance for rivers because of the number of dam removals in the works.

Frank Veraldi, a planner with the Army Corps who has been involved with the Des Plaines River study, said there are plans to remove three more dams in the south suburban Lyons area this coming summer and next.

Recommendations also are to take out five more dams on the Des Plaines between Ryerson and Lyons.

“Potentially, the whole Des Plaines River in seven years could be dam-free,” he said.

“They’re not performing their intended use and they’re becoming very old and dilapidated,” he added. “There’s no interest in rebuilding them because you don’t need them any more.”