Dam Busters Presents: A Tale of Two Rivers
- Anna Renkert
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 12 minutes ago
How information about dam removal helps communities near and far use best practices to work towards climate resilience.
Take a moment to pull out your phone and look up two places: London, Ontario in Canada, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts in the United States. At first glance, they might not seem to have much in common. London is the largest city in southwestern Ontario. The city sits at the fork of the Thames River where the river transitions into a large, meandering waterway. Pittsfield, by contrast, is situated in the Berkshire Hills near the confluence of the east and west branches of the Housatonic River, which flows from steep mountains down to its valley among rolling hills. But defunct dams are a common concern for these very different locations, and dam removers from both places have turned to Mass Rivers Alliance's Dam Busters webinar series for guidance.
Our team at Dam Busters recently spoke to Brad Glasman, Erin Carroll, and Sarbjit Singh of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) in London, and Jane Winn, Executive Director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) in Pittsfield about the dam-related challenges they face and their separate, but nevertheless similar, experiences using the information they’ve gained from attending the the Dam Busters webinars.
Dam Busting in the Upper Thames River Watershed
The Upper Thames watershed spreads across just over 1320 square miles in the province of Ontario, Canada, and eventually drains into Lake Erie via Lake St. Clair. The Upper Thames River has a few large flood control structures as well as approximately 650 smaller dams and barriers scattered on its numerous tributaries. Although this watershed is almost 600 miles from Boston, the small dams in the region are very similar to those in Massachusetts. They commonly began as grist mills, and many are still under private ownership. Several were rebuilt in the 1960s to create easily accessible beaches and lakes for recreation. Commonalities in river morphology, aquatic life, and fisheries mean that information from our New England-based webinars are relevant to the Upper Thames.
Some towns along the Upper Thames have become interested in decommissioning their small dams and barriers. Doing the dam removal work properly, with full buy-in from community members, and sufficient funding, is an ongoing challenge for the UTRCA. While water quality in the watershed has remained steady in recent times, the land use in the Upper Thames watershed is dominated by agriculture with the majority of nutrients coming from non-point sources, making the Thames River a major contributor of phosphorus on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes system. Thus, water quality is a major concern for Ontario’s provincial government. While the removal of any single small dam or barrier may not, on its own, significantly improve the quality of the water that reaches the Great Lakes, removing several small dams can improve water quality while also benefiting public safety, recreation, and habitat. With 27 native freshwater mussel species and 80 species of fish, the Upper Thames enjoys greater biodiversity than do rivers in other parts of Canada, making the preservation and restoration of riverine habitats in this watershed crucially important.
Dam Busting in the Housatonic River Watershed
Like the Upper Thames watershed, the Housatonic River has a large watershed of 2000 square miles with many tributaries and small streams, which form 24 subwatersheds. The river is peppered with dams, from hydroelectric facilities to many small, defunct mill dams. BEAT, located in Pittsfield, sees the legacy of the many paper mills that operated in that region in the 1800s. The Housatonic and its tributaries have hosted many manufacturing facilities since the turn of the century, and the waste from manufacturing was dumped into the river. Hydroelectric facilities were built in the early 20th century, and hydroelectric power remains one of the main public functions of the Housatonic today. Sadly, the Housatonic suffers from persistent PCB contamination, which can be found in the river bed and floodplain sediment. As with the Thames, any improvement in the Housatonic’s river health represents a solid step forward in improving conditions for the people and wildlife that use the river, and for downstream water bodies, including the river’s terminus, Long Island Sound. For these reasons (and many others) stewardship of the Housatonic has long been a focus for BEAT.
Dam Busters: A “Roadmap” for Dam Removal Success on Both Sides of the Border
Despite the differences in rivers and dam removal conditions, both the Upper Thames River Conservation Agency and the Berkshire Environmental Action Team have used the information they get from Dam Busters in similar ways to create more robust dam removal efforts.
For the UTRCA, a government-mandated non-profit organization, Dam Busters offers information that can be applied to any dam removal situation. Our webinars give the Upper Thames team a solid set of dam removal and river restoration best practices to work from. Because dam removals are so different from place to place, it can be difficult to anticipate the next best step in the process. Dam Busters has helped the team understand whether they are taking the right approach to any given project while also helping them make improvements in their dam removal planning. Brad, Erin, and Sarbjit report that Dam Busters webinars have given them “great information” as they do their work, and also “the confidence that they’ve done things correctly in the past.”
BEAT comes at this work from a different perspective, as an NGO that has long worked on engaging the town of Pittsfield and surrounding communities to support dam removal. But BEAT has never assembled a dam removal project from beginning to end. That opportunity presented itself recently, when the private owner of the Grist Mill Dam on the Housatonic approached BEAT’s Executive Director, Jane Winn, for help in determining what should be done about the structure. BEAT jumped in to connect the dam owner to a Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration expert to assess the dam. In addition to the poor condition of the structure, this dam impedes fish passage and may contribute to river health issues. Once it was determined that the dam should come down, BEAT began the process of designing the dam removal project, working with the Town of Pittsfield to apply for grant funds to finance the work. They turned to the Dam Busters webinars for guidance to fashion a solid dam removal plan and grant application. According to Jane, her staff repeatedly used the recorded webinars as reference tools while they put their project together. Jane says that Dam Busters was “extraordinarily helpful” in getting this project set up. Thanks to BEAT’s initiative and resourcefulness, and the support of the Dam Busters webinars, one more defunct dam will disappear from the Housatonic.
Dam Busters Demystifies
The stories of how these two very different locations and organizations have used Dam Busters to initiate projects and strengthen their dam removal expertise shows how much this information was needed to catalyze the removal of dams near and far. In late 2023, when the Dam Busters webinars began, the near-term goal was to make dam removal approachable for ordinary members of the community, municipal staff, and watershed protection groups. The long-term goal was to build a community of practice through knowledge sharing. After just over a year in operation, we can see the power of information in the stories from BEAT and the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. Dam Busters offers not just that information, but a sense of community that motivates and supports participants. We, the Dam Busters team, hope that sense of community continues to reap rewards for rivers, wildlife, and people everywhere.
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