I was living there when they took out the old concrete dam. It was poured right over the old timber dam. They were digging out timber to place the new stone.
Finally a dam removal video that understands what mill dams were for and why they existed! Very few understand history or even how we completely benefit today from these dams.
I think we're getting better at looking at both the costs and benefits of dam removal. Also, getting better at creative solutions. I've done a couple dam removal videos with different solutions, and have a couple more coming with still different strategies to maximize the positive while minimizing the negative.
Great Video. A, about Frankenmuth, a city we visit frequently for the fun vibe and chicken dinner. And B, I love hearing about the actual history of places, and this was a fine educational piece about a Dam I knew, and a lot of great facts that I didn't. Hadn't even thought of or considered dam removal, now I'm intrigued.
For a fish it might be great to have an artificial rapids for once. Nice big and even terraces of water to rest in. This place would be Metropolitan for fish standards.
Yep. From a fish's point of view, it's pretty similar to a fish ladder that works at all levels. As water flow goes up, the higher areas come into play.
Great video. I had no idea that a dam was removed in Frankenmuth. What they put in its place looks great for fish. I hope they do the same with Sanford Lake.
I haven't heard what they're putting in up there, but the way that dam was removed is definitely NOT the ideal method of dam removal. Rock ramps are a great way to make a dam fish-friendly and, as far as I can tell, nearly failure-proof. Another good solution that fully maintains the reservoir above is something like they did at Argo Dam in Ann Arbor, in cases where the concrete part is, itself, still solid.
I believe a major issue with the edenville dam vs Frankenmuth dam is, Sanford lake and the other lakes created from those series of dams have developed with people building lake front homes/cabins etc...those generate a ton of money from recreation plus property taxes. Like it or not money has to be generated for the upkeep and maintenance of our amenities, amenities that the modern American needs and, in a region lacking a large population and employment opportunities recreational opportunities from rebuilding the dam is the only way for that region.
It's not a bad strategy when you really want to maintain the lake/reservoir above the dam. One thing I'm finding as I look at more dam removals, if you let people get creative, you can get some very different solutions, and a lot of them seem to work really well.
@@Industrial_Revolutionto your point...i always thought of building like racks and having them in a series, in these racks would be some type of paddles etc something creating energy.... these racks could be raised and lowered allowing water to freely flow plus during certain fish migrations the racks could be raised to allow the fish to pass by plus still create energy.
A series of stream wheels? Typically, you don't extend them the full width of the river, so you don't even need to worry about raising them, since it's easy to swim around them.
@@Industrial_Revolution actually I'm thinking a rectangular frame say 6×3×3 for example and a series of these connected etc...inside of the frame you have several rows and layers of those lane divider's they have in Olympic racing pools to absorb the energy of the swimmers wakes... Obviously on river its powered by the current but on large bodies of water you can capture the surf...Im thinking this could be fairly light weight too. On high water events a series of racks could be raised to avoid the floating debris field. Fyi ,I watched a video on the reconstruction of one of the dams that gave way on the tittabawasse ...
It's hard to tell from the video but it looks like that's about a 12' drop from the top of the rapids to the bottom? I'd love to see the dam in Old Town Lansing replaced with something like this. It HAS a fish ladder, but an artificial rapids would help increase tourism here in Lansing. It would also open (downstream) canoe/kayak tourism from the confluence of the Red Cedar all the way to Grand Ledge.
@michiganengineer8621 the dam was ok, but the canal bank off it wasn't. It's now artificial rapids and pools and full of people canoeing and tubing through it.
Well actually have to admit it makes Frankenmuth a lot more interesting. Would now fancy a visit to check out their river management efforts, especially since knowing the vital history rivers played in the development of cities.
It's gone through a lot of things in the last, what, 50 years it's been there? I remember when they opened it, and the whole thing was a working grist mill, with flour and other "grist mill like-stuff" sold on part of the first floor. Then they took over the whole first floor for a gift shop, then a coffee shop. I was up there again a few weeks ago and they're a huge, new building next to it, and attached, for the new place. Zender's owns it, so they don't really have to immediately make money off it. The mill may have been better off moved out to Grandpa Tiny's Farm (a small, living history farm a few miles away, just outside of town).
Back then, the bottom of that dam was as far as they could go upstream. Now, they can keep going. They do stock the river now, including some at Frankemuth. Not sure if they stock upriver of there or not.
Every dam removal I've looked at, that's something that's been considered. Contaminates do accumulate behind dams. In some cases, they determined there wasn't much to worry about. In others, they're excavating all the sediment behind the dam to decontaminate before dam removal can proceed.
@Biocarey Oddly, they seemed pretty common. They didn't really need to hold back all the water, just enough to get some extra height from the reservoir.
How does this all work, outside of the fishes? Am I to think that the height of the rapids backs water up to large flat areas where flood waters can overflow and be 'stored' until after the event then flow back into the river slowly? This works, where you have low banks and low little used areas along river. Many dams are built where there are HIGH, to VERY HIGH banks, to better create a deep pool. Many lower dams, the pools created high value water front real estate now clogged with negating any ability to flood and store water. I guess this is a good niche method for communities where development passed them by leaving banks empty. That is of course also where low dams on rivers with low banks tend to be, and where they would, due to lack of tax money, be worse maintained. So good there. Big question? Does the dam need to removed? Can the rapids just be installed below the dam, even if solid concrete has to be poured under it to ensure it's stable forever. This would save huge amounts of money, and even reduce the env damage done from mega flows of sediment when a dam is removed. fyi mass concrete for under rapids, it's not like you order pumper truck after pumper truck. You pour add boulders pour add rock between boulders, and repeaat until boulders covered add more boulders. A GOOD concrete mix is one with a gradation of rock sizes that pass and disperse forces to surrounding concrete filler that is there to hold the rock in place. Rock is ALWAYS far stronger than concrete and is better at resisting and dispersing forces without degregation. Modern small gravel concrete is used as it's most economically viable for construcing buildings, where concrete thickenss is nearly always 4 to 6 inches, a foot, maybe two in columns, and there are masses of rebar to get around. It's used in mass concrete pours, because well, no one knows how to do 'rock' concrete any more, it requires honest contractors to do it right when no ones looking, or a licensed professional directly hired by owner to monitor work. In olden days there was always a licensed professional on big jobs on site, reviewing shop drawings and work every day. It's not done now so owners of these 10, 100, 1/2 billion dollar projects can cut the $200,000 to 2 million it might cost over that project range. You can buy your druggie kids their own sports cars for 200G, and a new jet for yourself for 2 million, and still keep the 25 to 200 million you'll make off the project.
The Cass River is unusual, at least for this area. There are serious levees built up on both banks, above and below the dam, stretching for many miles, even though most of it is farmland. The area above the dam was, and is, no wider than the river, just deeper, and floods just went up, and hopefully not over, those levees in the past. You can see one that I'm walking along in the video. Below the dam, the river was usually too low for much boating, but boating was popular above it, and people didn't want to lose it. The Rock Ramp method kept that water level at its original depth up there. Changes to a golf course that I mentioned gave the river somewhere to go in a flood, rather than overtopping the levees. Could you just build it directly downstream of an existing dam? Probably sometimes, but probably not always. The engineer in me is saying it really depends on the condition of the existing dam and, especially, the condition of the banks around it. I know some dam replacement projects have looked at using exactly that process when the dam was bad but the banks were good. If the banks are bad and need significant structural work, or if you can't go downriver for some reason, then the original dam, or at least a part of it, may have to go. On the other hand, sometimes the dam itself is fine, but the banks are bad, such as Argo Dam in Ann Arbor. That can lead to other creative options. Need to do a video on that one.
Horrible for fish? I haven't seen it at low water levels, but it's probably pretty impassible. It looks like the concrete is lower coming down the center, so as water levels drop, the channel will get more and more narrow, but I'm sure there's limits to how far it's usable for fish. From a human aesthetics point of view, the rock layout never really compares to natural rapids. I assume you've seen it low?
The embankment around the dam at manawa wi recently failed and drained the lake, cause the government people who were responsible did not open the gates sooner. They are are not held liable for any damages, who knew, right 👉.
There's both an art and a science to it. Open the gates and you flood the people downriver (see the damage going on right now from the 3-Gorges Dam in China), then you're blamed for it. Don't open the gates fast enough, then you're blamed for it. Believe the weather forecast, but get more rain than expected, open the gates later than needed due to the bad information coming in, and you still get blamed for it.
Strange. When beavers cut down all of the trees and build a dam and flood everything upstream and continue to cut down trees for food, no one talks about how they damage the environment. They seem to think it is all great and wonderful and get upset when people want to get rid of the beavers and stop the damage they cause. But when humans do the same it is an offense against nature and all humankind.
I think the highest beaver dam I've ever seen is around a 5' drop, give or take. Often only along one side of an island. Fish can usually get up past them, and the river flow, although slowed, still mostly follows seasonal patterns. When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, that ended up actually helping beavers, and previously destroyed wetlands were restored. Interestingly, the short drops, easy bypasses, and seasonal river flow, with the restoration of wetlands, tend to be potential design characteristics of microhydro. Also, beaver dams don't usually kill too many people they break, which is the major, non-environmental factor in most dam removals, especially those around heavily populated areas.
@@Industrial_Revolution And yet when humans build dams for their benefit and for the benefit of far far more people, modern environmentalist believe it is evil. The difference between a beaver dam and those built by humans is a matter of scale, not purpose. Like the videographer stated, everything we have today started with the industrial revolution. Many of those dams were small and no longer have the purpose they were built for and can be removed. Or, as is in this case, the dam is not removed so much as reconfigured. And because of what we now have, and have learned over the decades, we still have the benefit of the raised water level and have the tools necessary to alleviate the flooding that happen when lots of water goes down the river. Flooding that was happening long before any dam was built.
I'm the person who made the video. Still a one-person business. Every dam removal I've looked at so far, the solution has been different. Early removals were often not all that well done. They restored fish habitat, but often didn't take much else into consideration. Newer ones, though, are definitely taking other factors into consideration. Dexter was a straight removal and habitat restoration, which created a new park. Peninsular Paper is going to be a mostly straight removal, with preservation of some historic elements and expansion of a city park. Frankenmuth was, as you said, more a reconfiguration, fixing structural issues while maintaining the upriver water levels and still managing to reduce future flood risk. Ann Arbor's Argo Dam (working on that video) fixed a serious structural issue while improving fish habitat and easily doubling recreational use. Gorge Dam is expected to greatly reduce toxic waste issues, restore habitat, double the size of a park, and increase recreational river use. They're not all perfect, of course. Some of the dam removals along the Cuyahoga River have resulted in undoing much of the work done to restore the Ohio & Erie Canal, forcing them to look to more canal pumps to fix that, and it's not going as well as they'd hoped. They'll get there, but it looks like they'll need a lot more pumps than anticipated, then they'll need to go back and clear the vegetation back out of the canal again. The path to a successful dam removal appears to be taking your time, getting a LOT of community input, getting environmental impact input, and trying to figure out how to remove or change the dam with minimal losses and definite, defined gains. They're getting better at it, but it's still not 100%. Oh, and don't forget to bring back more beavers.
![What We Discovered Buried Shocked The Whole World❌ [ Strange Treasure Hunt By Metal Detector ]](/img/1.gif)
The homemade rapids are actually pretty cool...
Yep, and it still fixes most of the problems with dams.
Wow! I've never heard of a golf course being useful. That's fantastic.
I was living there when they took out the old concrete dam. It was poured right over the old timber dam. They were digging out timber to place the new stone.
The wood may explain why they took out the old concrete at all.
Thanks! Very informative and how we can replace these aged structures in a logical way.
Finally a dam removal video that understands what mill dams were for and why they existed! Very few understand history or even how we completely benefit today from these dams.
I think we're getting better at looking at both the costs and benefits of dam removal. Also, getting better at creative solutions. I've done a couple dam removal videos with different solutions, and have a couple more coming with still different strategies to maximize the positive while minimizing the negative.
Great Video. A, about Frankenmuth, a city we visit frequently for the fun vibe and chicken dinner. And B, I love hearing about the actual history of places, and this was a fine educational piece about a Dam I knew, and a lot of great facts that I didn't. Hadn't even thought of or considered dam removal, now I'm intrigued.
Thanks! Bavarian Inn was a destination for special family events when I was a kid, too.
For a fish it might be great to have an artificial rapids for once. Nice big and even terraces of water to rest in. This place would be Metropolitan for fish standards.
Yep. From a fish's point of view, it's pretty similar to a fish ladder that works at all levels. As water flow goes up, the higher areas come into play.
Great video. I had no idea that a dam was removed in Frankenmuth. What they put in its place looks great for fish. I hope they do the same with Sanford Lake.
I haven't heard what they're putting in up there, but the way that dam was removed is definitely NOT the ideal method of dam removal. Rock ramps are a great way to make a dam fish-friendly and, as far as I can tell, nearly failure-proof. Another good solution that fully maintains the reservoir above is something like they did at Argo Dam in Ann Arbor, in cases where the concrete part is, itself, still solid.
I believe a major issue with the edenville dam vs Frankenmuth dam is, Sanford lake and the other lakes created from those series of dams have developed with people building lake front homes/cabins etc...those generate a ton of money from recreation plus property taxes. Like it or not money has to be generated for the upkeep and maintenance of our amenities, amenities that the modern American needs and, in a region lacking a large population and employment opportunities recreational opportunities from rebuilding the dam is the only way for that region.
Maybe Sanford and Edenvale dams should have done this for the fish and the environment ! !
It's not a bad strategy when you really want to maintain the lake/reservoir above the dam. One thing I'm finding as I look at more dam removals, if you let people get creative, you can get some very different solutions, and a lot of them seem to work really well.
Jason may have covered that possibility?
@@Industrial_Revolutionto your point...i always thought of building like racks and having them in a series, in these racks would be some type of paddles etc something creating energy.... these racks could be raised and lowered allowing water to freely flow plus during certain fish migrations the racks could be raised to allow the fish to pass by plus still create energy.
A series of stream wheels? Typically, you don't extend them the full width of the river, so you don't even need to worry about raising them, since it's easy to swim around them.
@@Industrial_Revolution actually I'm thinking a rectangular frame say 6×3×3 for example and a series of these connected etc...inside of the frame you have several rows and layers of those lane divider's they have in Olympic racing pools to absorb the energy of the swimmers wakes... Obviously on river its powered by the current but on large bodies of water you can capture the surf...Im thinking this could be fairly light weight too. On high water events a series of racks could be raised to avoid the floating debris field. Fyi ,I watched a video on the reconstruction of one of the dams that gave way on the tittabawasse ...
It's hard to tell from the video but it looks like that's about a 12' drop from the top of the rapids to the bottom? I'd love to see the dam in Old Town Lansing replaced with something like this. It HAS a fish ladder, but an artificial rapids would help increase tourism here in Lansing. It would also open (downstream) canoe/kayak tourism from the confluence of the Red Cedar all the way to Grand Ledge.
It's 13' high. The fish ladder in Lansing is a nice design. Have you seen what was done in Ann Arbor at Argo Dam?
@@Industrial_Revolution No I haven't, we don't get down to that part of the State often.
@michiganengineer8621 the dam was ok, but the canal bank off it wasn't. It's now artificial rapids and pools and full of people canoeing and tubing through it.
Well actually have to admit it makes Frankenmuth a lot more interesting. Would now fancy a visit to check out their river management efforts, especially since knowing the vital history rivers played in the development of cities.
That mill has been there for a long time. It has only recently been remodeled. I remember when it was repurposed as a general store.
It's gone through a lot of things in the last, what, 50 years it's been there? I remember when they opened it, and the whole thing was a working grist mill, with flour and other "grist mill like-stuff" sold on part of the first floor. Then they took over the whole first floor for a gift shop, then a coffee shop. I was up there again a few weeks ago and they're a huge, new building next to it, and attached, for the new place. Zender's owns it, so they don't really have to immediately make money off it. The mill may have been better off moved out to Grandpa Tiny's Farm (a small, living history farm a few miles away, just outside of town).
Like how they went back to allow the river to flow naturally, dam removal in Europe has been on the rise also
Yep, all these first-generation concrete dams are hitting end of life so, for many, it's remove them, replace, them, or risk them breaking.
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I'd bet the fish are grateful.
Places that have done dam removals have seen amazingly fast ecosystem recovery.
Where is this town located?🙋
It's in Michigan, right on I-75, half-way between Flint and Saginaw. About an hour and a half north of Detroit.
Good fishing
Be thankful there will be more fish.
Interesting video
Thanks!
Nice and good, but pull a few rocks. Caught a coho through the ice winter of '73 below the old dam.
Back then, the bottom of that dam was as far as they could go upstream. Now, they can keep going. They do stock the river now, including some at Frankemuth. Not sure if they stock upriver of there or not.
Polluted 😎
Every dam removal I've looked at, that's something that's been considered. Contaminates do accumulate behind dams. In some cases, they determined there wasn't much to worry about. In others, they're excavating all the sediment behind the dam to decontaminate before dam removal can proceed.
Wasn’t there a brewery by the river in the 1980s?
I think there still is, just upriver from the dam. Right in the center of town.
There were two breweries, Carlings, right by the bridge, and the much older Geyer Brothers at the top of the hill north of downtown.
@@StephenFrei-qo6ruBefore Carling, they brewed Frankenmuth Beer.
I would expect a wooden dam wouldn’t work.
It woodn't whistle. Tried a steel one, but it still wouldn't whistle. So try one made of tin. Now you tin whistle. LoL
@greggweber9967 You used to work amusement park jungle cruises, didn't you?
@Biocarey Oddly, they seemed pretty common. They didn't really need to hold back all the water, just enough to get some extra height from the reservoir.
I edited the last sentence so that I tin whistle.
@Industrial_Revolution No. Just something I heard in the movie "The Jester" staring Danny Kaye.
How does this all work, outside of the fishes? Am I to think that the height of the rapids backs water up to large flat areas where flood waters can overflow and be 'stored' until after the event then flow back into the river slowly? This works, where you have low banks and low little used areas along river. Many dams are built where there are HIGH, to VERY HIGH banks, to better create a deep pool. Many lower dams, the pools created high value water front real estate now clogged with negating any ability to flood and store water. I guess this is a good niche method for communities where development passed them by leaving banks empty. That is of course also where low dams on rivers with low banks tend to be, and where they would, due to lack of tax money, be worse maintained. So good there.
Big question?
Does the dam need to removed?
Can the rapids just be installed below the dam, even if solid concrete has to be poured under it to ensure it's stable forever. This would save huge amounts of money, and even reduce the env damage done from mega flows of sediment when a dam is removed. fyi mass concrete for under rapids, it's not like you order pumper truck after pumper truck. You pour add boulders pour add rock between boulders, and repeaat until boulders covered add more boulders. A GOOD concrete mix is one with a gradation of rock sizes that pass and disperse forces to surrounding concrete filler that is there to hold the rock in place. Rock is ALWAYS far stronger than concrete and is better at resisting and dispersing forces without degregation. Modern small gravel concrete is used as it's most economically viable for construcing buildings, where concrete thickenss is nearly always 4 to 6 inches, a foot, maybe two in columns, and there are masses of rebar to get around. It's used in mass concrete pours, because well, no one knows how to do 'rock' concrete any more, it requires honest contractors to do it right when no ones looking, or a licensed professional directly hired by owner to monitor work. In olden days there was always a licensed professional on big jobs on site, reviewing shop drawings and work every day. It's not done now so owners of these 10, 100, 1/2 billion dollar projects can cut the $200,000 to 2 million it might cost over that project range. You can buy your druggie kids their own sports cars for 200G, and a new jet for yourself for 2 million, and still keep the 25 to 200 million you'll make off the project.
The Cass River is unusual, at least for this area. There are serious levees built up on both banks, above and below the dam, stretching for many miles, even though most of it is farmland. The area above the dam was, and is, no wider than the river, just deeper, and floods just went up, and hopefully not over, those levees in the past. You can see one that I'm walking along in the video.
Below the dam, the river was usually too low for much boating, but boating was popular above it, and people didn't want to lose it. The Rock Ramp method kept that water level at its original depth up there. Changes to a golf course that I mentioned gave the river somewhere to go in a flood, rather than overtopping the levees.
Could you just build it directly downstream of an existing dam? Probably sometimes, but probably not always. The engineer in me is saying it really depends on the condition of the existing dam and, especially, the condition of the banks around it. I know some dam replacement projects have looked at using exactly that process when the dam was bad but the banks were good. If the banks are bad and need significant structural work, or if you can't go downriver for some reason, then the original dam, or at least a part of it, may have to go. On the other hand, sometimes the dam itself is fine, but the banks are bad, such as Argo Dam in Ann Arbor. That can lead to other creative options. Need to do a video on that one.
When the water is low that rock rapids looks horrible…like some sort of Roman torture chamber…
Horrible for fish? I haven't seen it at low water levels, but it's probably pretty impassible. It looks like the concrete is lower coming down the center, so as water levels drop, the channel will get more and more narrow, but I'm sure there's limits to how far it's usable for fish. From a human aesthetics point of view, the rock layout never really compares to natural rapids. I assume you've seen it low?
@@Industrial_Revolution yeah..I used to live nearby. With low water levels all you see is alot of rock…no way fish can get up it.
I guess spawning is more of a spring thing, so low water shouldn't usually be too much of an issue for them.
@@garydelcourt2791So what is your alternative?
The embankment around the dam at manawa wi recently failed and drained the lake, cause the government people who were responsible did not open the gates sooner. They are are not held liable for any damages, who knew, right 👉.
There's both an art and a science to it. Open the gates and you flood the people downriver (see the damage going on right now from the 3-Gorges Dam in China), then you're blamed for it. Don't open the gates fast enough, then you're blamed for it. Believe the weather forecast, but get more rain than expected, open the gates later than needed due to the bad information coming in, and you still get blamed for it.
Along with lamprey
Invasives are certainly an issue.
Strange. When beavers cut down all of the trees and build a dam and flood everything upstream and continue to cut down trees for food, no one talks about how they damage the environment. They seem to think it is all great and wonderful and get upset when people want to get rid of the beavers and stop the damage they cause.
But when humans do the same it is an offense against nature and all humankind.
I think the highest beaver dam I've ever seen is around a 5' drop, give or take. Often only along one side of an island. Fish can usually get up past them, and the river flow, although slowed, still mostly follows seasonal patterns.
When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, that ended up actually helping beavers, and previously destroyed wetlands were restored. Interestingly, the short drops, easy bypasses, and seasonal river flow, with the restoration of wetlands, tend to be potential design characteristics of microhydro.
Also, beaver dams don't usually kill too many people they break, which is the major, non-environmental factor in most dam removals, especially those around heavily populated areas.
@@Industrial_Revolution
And yet when humans build dams for their benefit and for the benefit of far far more people, modern environmentalist believe it is evil.
The difference between a beaver dam and those built by humans is a matter of scale, not purpose.
Like the videographer stated, everything we have today started with the industrial revolution. Many of those dams were small and no longer have the purpose they were built for and can be removed. Or, as is in this case, the dam is not removed so much as reconfigured. And because of what we now have, and have learned over the decades, we still have the benefit of the raised water level and have the tools necessary to alleviate the flooding that happen when lots of water goes down the river. Flooding that was happening long before any dam was built.
I'm the person who made the video. Still a one-person business.
Every dam removal I've looked at so far, the solution has been different. Early removals were often not all that well done. They restored fish habitat, but often didn't take much else into consideration. Newer ones, though, are definitely taking other factors into consideration. Dexter was a straight removal and habitat restoration, which created a new park. Peninsular Paper is going to be a mostly straight removal, with preservation of some historic elements and expansion of a city park. Frankenmuth was, as you said, more a reconfiguration, fixing structural issues while maintaining the upriver water levels and still managing to reduce future flood risk. Ann Arbor's Argo Dam (working on that video) fixed a serious structural issue while improving fish habitat and easily doubling recreational use. Gorge Dam is expected to greatly reduce toxic waste issues, restore habitat, double the size of a park, and increase recreational river use.
They're not all perfect, of course. Some of the dam removals along the Cuyahoga River have resulted in undoing much of the work done to restore the Ohio & Erie Canal, forcing them to look to more canal pumps to fix that, and it's not going as well as they'd hoped. They'll get there, but it looks like they'll need a lot more pumps than anticipated, then they'll need to go back and clear the vegetation back out of the canal again.
The path to a successful dam removal appears to be taking your time, getting a LOT of community input, getting environmental impact input, and trying to figure out how to remove or change the dam with minimal losses and definite, defined gains. They're getting better at it, but it's still not 100%.
Oh, and don't forget to bring back more beavers.
Dam good video
Thanks! Glad you liked it.