B Bill Leavens 12 years ago I was very pleased to be a part of these initial efforts. The single most important part of these initial removals truly was serendipity. The Musconetcong Watershed Association was approached by the Gruendyke Dam owner looking for relief from the NJDEP dam safety requirements. The owner also wanted to eliminate the liability that the dam posed. The Association partnered with Princeton Hydro and started learning a bit about the business. We had a number of very fortuitous breaks. We looked for funding and found it to be a daunting challenge. Fortunately, the dam straddled two counties and we were able to connect with funding sources that enabled us to pay for the initial engineering and permitting. The dam owner was willing to sell the development rights on a portion of his land to one county agency. That got the ball rolling. The county on the other side of the river recognized that the dam posed a potential hazard to life and property and provided additional funding to remove the structure. The Watershed Association negotiated an agreement with a major residential developer who was clearing stone from a site within two miles of the Gruendyke dam. We needed about 1600 tons of large round rock in order to build weirs to stabilize sediment upstream of the Gruendyle and Seber dams in Hackettstown. The majority of the cost of stone purchase would have been trucking and it is extremely fortuitous that stone was located so close to the project. That good luck saved a huge amount of cost and heartache. Tim Dunne of USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service was instrumental in locating the stone at the construction site. Negotiations with the builder were conducted by Brian Cowden, an MWA volunteer who was State Council Vice Chair of Trout Unlimited. The efforts of these gentlemen on behalf of the river were extraordinary. The dam removal project was the result of close collaboration between a number of interested parties whose sole aim is to remove obsolete dams from the river. These include Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, The New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen, Princeton Hydro, the Town of Hackettstown, Warren County, Morris County and Gruendyke owners Rodger and Eileen Cornell. Working through these first two dam removal projects we learned a very valuable lesson that is being applied to other completed and pending removals. We learned the importance of working with a large, cooperative partnership to spread the burden of community outreach, funding, riparian restoration, monitoring and the many tasks that have to be undertaken before and after the dam is removed. In all of the removals to date the river has immediately responded to the work. Sufficient progress was made in the river’s recovery that NJDEP has responded with a new emphasis on dam removal rather than repair as the preferred procedure going forward. That has been a ‘watershed’ change of atitude and we are very grateful for NJDEP’s new awareness. We can’t wait to sink our teeth into the remaining dams on the Musconetong. Then we’ll start to work on the rest of the state. Torpedo the dams! Full speed ahead!
G Geoff Goll 12 years ago Thanks, Bill. Glad you could post some historical elements of the work in Hackettstown, NJ for posterity. The key is coalitions of collaborators/stakeholders to make these efforts work. It is always a pleasure to work with individuals who are dedicated to restoring rivers.
T Thanks to Duke Farms for re-posting our blog at their blog site!!Dam Removals in New Jersey – How Did We Get Here? | Behind the Stone Walls 12 years ago […] read more, visit the Princeton Hydro blog […]
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