Batavia council picks $13.5 million proposal to replace downtown dam, create whitewater passage
Engineers may soon start developing plans to remove a dam in downtown Batavia, as the city council settled on an option Monday night.
In an 8-4 vote, the council picked Concept B, which would remove the crumbling 112-year-old concrete lowhead dam, put in a lower, safer dam, and put rock weirs in the river north of the new dam.
The weirs and the new dam, combined with an earthen berm from Duck Island to a peninsula, would create a white water-type passage in the river for kayakers, while maintaining the current water level in the adjacent Depot Pond.
A preliminary cost estimate is $13.5 million.
The other plan, Concept A, was to remove the dam and build a berm from the western bank to the peninsula. It's cost was estimated at $4.5 million.
The city and the Batavia Park District are working together on a master plan for the riverfront. The city owns the dam, and the park district owns Depot Pond and the Riverwalk. The park board is expected to vote soon and select Concept B.
Picking a dam concept is essential to advancing the project, City Administrator Laura Newman told the council Monday.
Neither the city nor the park district have the final say about what, if anything, can be added to the river. That is up to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The corps is updating a study of the lowhead dams on the Fox River in Illinois, Newman said. That includes modeling what would happen if all the dams were removed.
The dam runs from the east bank of the Fox River to a peninsula containing the Riverwalk, an apartment building and city hall. It developed a breach in 1976 near its eastern edge.
The council has discussed what to do about the dam on and off for at least two decades. The city could have had the state pay part of the cost to remove the dam in the early 2000s, but residents opposed the plan. So the state instead spent the money on modifying the Glen Palmer Dam in Yorkville, including adding a white-water chute.
City officials say the state will not pay to repair the dam, and that if it fails, river levels to the north would drop, causing the water level in Depot Pond to fall about 6 feet.
Alderman Chris Solfa, who voted "no," described the proposed weirs as "throwing rocks across the river," and favored Concept A.
Alderman Mark Uher, an avid kayaker, said a white-water passage could attract visitors. He also argued that if the current impoundment north of the dam goes away, as it would in Concept A, canoeing and kayaking the river could become difficult, due to lower water levels.
Alderman Dan Chanzit said the vote does not obligate the city to do anything.
"We're just saying let's move forward, let's give them (the state and Army Corps of Engineers) our plan and see what happens," he said.