Fight Over Dam

While there are no immediate plans to remove it, a squabble has developed over the Au Sable River dam near downtown Grayling.

The state is ceding ownership of the dam (and attendant maintenance costs) to the city, but Grayling is declining the honor.

The first dam in the stretch of river involved was built by timber cutters a century ago. The shallow backwaters the dam created are called the Stump Pond, a stretch that averages less than two feet deep and is filled with decades-old lumbering debris, water lilies, and other vegetation.

Through the years it became a major local wetlands and wildlife habitat, home to large numbers of breeding and migrating ducks, Canada geese, and other animals. But the shallow, dark-bottomed pond soaks up the heat of the summer sun and warms the Au Sable, which meanders through the center of it.

Trout fishermen and Department of Natural Resources biologists have long argued that the warm water flowing over the dam degrades the trout habitat in the first few miles below Grayling. They want to see the dam removed, claiming the Stump Pond is an unnatural artifact that didn't exist in the river before the area was settled.

Of course, neither did the trout.

The brookies, browns, and rainbows that have made the Au Sable one of the most storied trout streams in the East were introduced by settlers in the late nineteenth century after environmental destruction and overfishing wiped out the Michigan grayling, a game fish that once abounded in the streams of the northern Lower Peninsula but is now extinct.

The latest contretemps is a result of last summer's heavy rains, when, for the first time in memory, the downtown dam had to be sandbagged as high water threatened to get behind the wings and breach it - which would have flooded miles of river lined with businesses, homes, and summer cottages.

The steel dam was erected by the state Department of Transportation when it built the bridge that carries traffic over the river on Business Loop I-75. During the rain emergency the state did some repairs on broken welds in the dam wings.

At that point the DNR and DOT decided it was time to learn just who was responsible for maintaining the dam and any damages that a breach might cause, a prudent precaution in an era of class-action lawsuits.

The state hired a local title search company to investigate the matter, and the company reported that the City of Grayling owns the dam and it sits on city property.

This is of no little moment, because the state has ordered an engineering survey of the dam this spring or summer, and any repair costs must be borne by the owner.

In 1991 the state removed the ancient, decrepit Salling Dam a few miles upstream, much to the dismay of property owners along that stretch of river. That dam had long been abandoned by its original builders, and the property owners could not afford repair costs of $400,000.

After the Salling Dam was removed, people who once had homes on a narrow lake found they owned property on a river channel. The new land exposed in their back yards when the waters receded proved so mucky it might be years before anyone can walk on it, and tons of black, gooey silt that washed downstream created gumbo swamps behind more homes.

But the removal of Salling also created a new, steady current through the Stump Pond, and DNR fisheries biologists say that the water coming over the downtown Grayling dam today is considerably cooler.

That didn't stop homeowners affected by the drawdown of the old Salling Dam from suing the state for damage to their properties. A judge dismissed the suit, but the homeowners have appealed.

The suit has temporarily stopped the state from carrying out plans to build a sand trap in the river above the old Salling Dam site. That decision has trout fishermen screaming that if the sand trap isn't put in, then the effort and expense of removing the dam might be largely negated.

DNR insiders say the homeowners' lawsuit could well be followed by another legal squabble between the City of Grayling and the state over the downtown dam, and several fisheries biologists say that if the city demands the state take ownership, then the state should simply pull out the dam.

So if you visit Grayling to fish or canoe, you'll probably see the downtown dam for some time to come.

If it ever comes out, there's no question it will improve trout fishing downstream. But it will be at a great cost to the ducks, mink, otters, and other critters that live and raise their young around the Stump Pond.

It's another case of man doing things to the environment that seemed like a good idea at the time but which came back to haunt him years later. It shows that we need to think carefully before we interfere in natural systems, even if our motives are good.

We can't just write off our mistakes as water over the dam.

This was first published in the Detroit Free Press on January 6, 1995. It is used here with permisssion. - Editor

RWOL

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