Portage Dam
A River Tries to Run Through It
By Dirk Fischbach
Imagine a law written that would allow a select group of landowners to harness a vital public resource to enhance their personal land values -- to the detriment of their neighbors, who vastly outnumber them.
"Un-American," we would say. "Preposterous," we might add.
"Done deal," our geographically privileged brethren would retort.
And, in fact, they would be correct.
Back in 1961, the state legislature passed Public Act 146, which allowed lakefront property owners to petition the courts to set a mandated water level for their lake. It required two-thirds of affected landowners (those who owned riparian properties) to sign the petition, and then the courts could act.
To maintain this court-appointed level, the owners were allowed to erect whatever structures (dams, pumping stations, etc.) might be necessary to comply with this figure.
To the lakefront owners it was a wonderful thing. Docks could be placed with certainty that water levels would be constant; recreational boaters would know that underwater hazards would remain safely under water. If high waters came, the dam could be opened to vent the excess so that no flooding of their properties would occur.
Utopia.
Unless, of course, you happened to be someone outside the gilded realm. If you were simply a user of a river (or worse yet, an organism living in the river), you lost stream flow, dealt with higher water temperatures and suffered all the other consequences of dams (blockage of organisms, loss of woody debris, etc.)
And, you would have almost no recourse. Unless the lakefront residents themselves heard your plea and decided to petition the court to change things, you would basically be out of luck.
The Huron River has its birth in the sheltered swamplands of Oakland County. It flows 136 miles on a journey to Point Mouille at Lake Erie, dropping 446 feet along its route. Its watershed covers 900 square miles and more than 1,000,000 people live within the drainage.
There are at least 96 dams on the Huron system; 77 on tributaries and 19 on the mainstream. In total, 54 miles (40 percent) of the river are impounded by dams. A few of these structures were built for the generation of hydroelectric energy (a trend that ended when competitive energy sources became more favored). But, from 1945 to 1970 most of the dams were built to maintain water levels for recreational purposes or for housing developments.
Today, we are living with the consequences of those dams.
Avid river users have long known that stream flows are dictated by dam operations. On the Huron, evaporation from the impoundments alone robs us of 21 percent of the mid-summer flow we would enjoy were it not for dams. And while the hydroelectric dams on the river operate under a federal mandate that requires they adhere to a “run of river” regimen, the other structures are set or manipulated for the express benefit of select groups of property owners and are widely variable in their daily operations.
Canoeists and fishermen on the river are accustomed to artificially low stream flows from the end of June through November (when the flood gates are opened to drain the lakes to reduce ice damage to lakefront properties).
This past Memorial Day Weekend, court-allowed manipulation of the Flook Dam (Baseline/Portage Lake) caused a dramatic drop in stream flow at a time when smallmouth bass likely were at the peak of their spawning activity. During this draw down, the USGS gauging station at Ann Arbor recorded a drop of more than 200 cfs in a period of 48 hours, effectively cutting the stream flow in half (from 400 cfs to less than 200 cfs). Critical habitat was robbed of water and left exposed.
Up until recent times, it seemed that only paddle sport and fishing enthusiasts suffered for the lack of water. A seemingly small concern, given the state of the world in general.
However, a series of dry years has made the entire system more sensitive, and last spring, officials expressed fear that continued low summer flows could put the quality of municipal water supplies in jeopardy. Ann Arbor receives approximately 80 percent of its drinking water from the river, and most local communities draw from wells tapping the same underground sources that feed the river. For the first time in recent memory, we faced the prospect that the broader population could be left short -- at least in part -- because of court-sanctioned takings upstream.
With the image of an imperiled water supply freshly in our minds, now is the time to take action.
First, our lawmakers must be pressured to repeal the disastrous Inland Lake Level Act (now encompassed in Act 451 of 1994). Such elitist concepts -- with destructive environmental consequences -- never should have been made into law in the first place. Its purging is long overdue.
Next, we must act (with the help of professional ecologists and biologists) to modify the operation of dams on the Huron system to work for everyone’s benefit – or at least not to anyone’s obvious detriment. Lakefront owners and river users can both “win,” but there needs to be give and take; currently, the law only supports “take.”
Mark Twain once observed that, “Whisky’s for drinkin’, but water’s for fightin’.” And to be sure, changing water use patterns may require some confrontation. However, it would be better to wage the battles that need to be fought, rather than to be left high and dry.
Dirk Fischbach is a professional guide and author of “The Fly Fisher’s Huron.” A graduate of the University of Michigan, he is actively involved in conservation issues throughout the state. He lives in Saline.
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