White River dam altered to help darters, paddlers
Muncie is at the forefront statewide in dam removal and modification
MUNCIE — Four of the five dams on the White River in Muncie have now been removed or altered with the recently announced modification of the dam at the Indiana American Water Co. treatment plant on Burlington Drive.
“Muncie is proud to lead the way in dam removals and modifications within the state of Indiana,” the sponsors of the latest project said in a news release. “The removal of the Muncie dams has helped the eels, darters, freshwater mussels and people with better and safer passage along the river. It is the hope that others can follow this example and help improve waterways around the state for both fish and recreationalists.”
Indiana ranks 30th in the U.S. in dam removal, according to American Rivers, a river conservation organization that maintains a national dam removal database.
More than 1,950 dams have been eliminated in the U.S. since 1912, including 15 in Indiana. Yet an estimated two million remain, providing water for drinking and other purposes, such as crop irrigation, livestock, recreation, industry and power production. But there are also negative impacts to obstructing the vast majority of our formerly free-flowing rivers.
In the Hoosier state, dam removals total:
Two from White River in Muncie; two from Eel River in North Manchester; two from Eel River in Logansport; one from Eel River in Mexico; two from Indian Creek in Corydon; and one each from the Elkhart River in Elkhart; Sugar Creek in Crawfordsville; Little River in Huntington; Fawn River in Steuben County, and the Tippecanoe River in Warsaw. All were removed in the past decade. The 15th barrier to be removed was Pinhook Dam, from an unspecified location and date.
The Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District secured state, federal and foundation funding for a $205,000 alteration of the water company’s five-feet-tall concrete dam that impounds White River for Muncie’s drinking water.
Dam modification doesn’t count in the American Rivers’ dam removal inventory, spokesperson Amy Souers Kober told me, adding, “Dams must have the full vertical extent of the dam removed for a significant portion of the dam such that normal river flow and fish passage are reestablished.”
But that doesn’t mean the modification isn’t beneficial.
Instead of removing the water company dam, a man-made “rock riffle” of boulders and rocks was built up immediately downstream of the dam to mimic natural rapids. Rather than spilling over the dam in a steep vertical drop, the river now descends gradually from the dam over the rock riffle — a rocky or shallow part of a river with rough water.
“I’ve been out there on my kayak,” said Toria Callow, a local hiker and paddler, who told me she has felt safe carrying the kayak over the modified dam. “It’s no longer a huge drop with water bubbling at the bottom. It’s a gradual descent.”
Low head dams have been called “drowning machines” because the water flowing over the dam can create a turbulent current that traps a swimmer or boater.
“The Indiana American Water Co. dam in Muncie is a truly unique approach to dam removals statewide,” says restoration biologist Doug Nusbaum of the Lake and River Enhancement Program (LARE) at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “There are times when dam removal is not an option. This dam is one of those instances since the water company still needs it to provide adequate water levels at its White River intake.”
DNR, the Ed and Virginia Ball Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) funded the dam modification.
“The USFWS funding is specifically tied to increasing fish passage on rivers in the Ohio River basin,” Kevin Haupt of the USFWS added in the news release. “The Muncie water company dam provided the USFWS a unique opportunity to study a species of very small darter fish and their ability to swim through the constructed riffle. This study would not be possible without the 50-plus years of fish data the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality has collected. Muncie is very fortunate to have what might be the longest water quality fisheries studies in the country due to the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality.”
The bureau is injecting a harmless tracing tag into the darters. The pliable colored elastomer allows the bureau’s biologists to follow the fish to determine if they can swim through the newly constructed riffle to habitats previously unreachable because of the dam.
Director Rick Conrad says bureau biologists have seen big changes in the fisheries where Muncie already removed two dams a few years ago.
“We have documented increased movements of smallmouth bass since the other Muncie dams have been removed,” Conrad was quoted as saying. “We anticipate something similar with the modification of this dam and are eager to follow the darters upstream. The information collected will add to the knowledge used by USFWS and others as they explore dam removal options elsewhere.”
Two obsolete dams removed in recent years from White River in Muncie were the 19th-century George R. Dale Dam in McCulloch Park that once powered a gristmill, a saw mill and a power plant; and the 19th-century Indiana Steel and Wire dam that was used for the factory's cooling processes. The IS&W factory closed years ago, and the McCulloch dam also was no longer needed for industrial purposes.
The dam at the Muncie Sanitary District’s water pollution control facility already has been modified into a rock riffle. That strucgture contains a major sewer line.
The city’s fifth dam remains standing downtown, across White River at the Fallen Heroes Memorial Bridge. The barrier was built around 1910 for a power-generating station that has long since been decommissioned.
A study is being conducted to determine whether that dam can be removed or modified, according to Erik Fisher, chairman of the local soil and water conservation district.
One example of a species affected by the downtown dam is the American eel, which begins its life cycle in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and travels upstream in freshwater rivers until maturity, when it will then return to the ocean to reproduce.
Female eels travel north up rivers until they are stopped by an object like a dam. They have been seen crawling through wet grass or rocks to go around an obstruction. After six to 20 years, they travel back to the ocean to reproduce.
The Bureau of Water Quality in 2013 captured an American eel near the nine-feet-tall Fallen Heroes Bridge, only the second eel caught by the district since 1972.
It is believed the eels traveled from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean, up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River to the Wabash River to the White River.
Since Muncie incorporated more than 150 years ago, the White River has been straightened, channelized and dammed, turning some sections into slow-moving ponds with no riffles, pools or back eddies. Many fish are not as well adapted for living in those types of areas.
The west fork of the White River is 312 miles long and contained 12 dams from Winchester to the Wabash River until two were removed in Muncie.
According to The Nature Conservancy, rivers and wetlands play a critical role in thermal microclimates, carbon storage, flood control and groundwater recharge in addition to supporting native plants and animal species.
However, dams change the chemical, physical, and biological processes of rivers and backwater wetlands; alter water temperature and oxygen levels; and can trap sediments, which are sometimes contaminated in the backwater area. Sediment pollution is a major contributor to the degradation of aquatic life.
There are more than 90,000 dams in the U.S. National Inventory of Dams, yet it’s estimated that there are closer to two million dams when counting smaller ones not included in the inventory.
As a result, less than 2% of American rivers are free-flowing. Instead, they are contained and diverted by millions of dams, ditches and road crossings and thousands of miles of levees.
Callow, a kayaker on the White River in Muncie, is a spokesperson for Flatland Resources, a Muncie landscape architecture and design-build firm that installed the rock riffle at the water company dam.
In 2020, the water company announced its completion of a $23-million project that included replacing the existing White River raw-water intake and outdated raw-water pumping facilities at its southeast Muncie treatment plan.
The new raw-water intake placed a screen structure in the river that uses bursts of air to automatically keep the intake free of debris and organic material present in the river. In-line sensors also alert plant employees of any potential water-intake issues. The previous intake used a manual, mechanical process to clear the intake.
Other improvements included adding ultraviolet disinfection to the treatment process to help meet new federal drinking water standards.
The company invested another $14 million in its Muncie system to install new wells (another source of Muncie’s drinking water); to make repairs and improvements at Prairie Creek reservoir, which keeps the river flowing during droughts; to install numerous automatic main-flushing devices to lower disinfection by-products, and to construct a new finished-water pump station and a 1.25 million gallon underground water storage tank at the Muncie treatment facility.
The company also has spent more than $13 million to replace or relocate more than 12 miles of aging water mains in the Muncie area.
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