Dam Removal High Priority, Corps Says

By Mark Ferenchik, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jun. 16–It’s supposed to cost $1.82 million to remove the 5th Avenue low-head dam on the Olentangy River.

The city didn’t get the federal money it said it needed to begin taking out the dam this year.

Christa Ansley wonders why not. Her son, Christian Hallam, drowned there last week after the inner-tube raft he was riding plummeted over the 8-foot dam soon after sunrise June 7.

“Take our tax dollars and get these things out,” Ansley said Thursday. “They know they’re trouble.”

But it’s not as simple as blowing it up, officials said. Crews have to take the time to remove it carefully to protect the stream banks.

All of that takes money, money the city said it doesn’t have without federal help. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it is trying to secure funding by 2010.

A Corps official called it a high priority.

The city-owned dam was built in 1935 to supply cooling water to an Ohio State University power plant.

The dam is 470 feet wide and made of concrete and perhaps some large rocks, said Joe McCallister, lead engineer for the Corps of Engineers in Huntington, W.Va., which last year put together a feasibility study on the dam’s removal.

A crew couldn’t simply blow it up or use any other method to quickly remove it, McCallister said. If the water behind the dam were to drop fast, that would not only damage the stream’s ecosystem but could destabilize the banks.

Instead, a crew would cut a 50-foot-long chunk out of the middle of the dam and drop that section down a foot a day. After the water dropped low enough, the crew would build a causeway over that void and begin to remove the dam.

The project would take up to six months in the summer and fall when the water is low, McCallister said.

Federal rules also require crews to seed and plant on the banks and place rocks in the riverbed to create turbulence and improve water quality.

Project costs can vary depending on what’s involved. It cost $1.37 million to remove a dam on the Cuyahoga River in Summit County, but only $44,500 to remove a dam on the Olentangy River owned by the city of Delaware.

The Corps was trying to obtain $1.18 million from the federal government to help pay for the 5th Avenue dam removal; the city was to provide the rest.

“If we can get that federal money, we can tear it down,” said Rick Tilton, city utilities spokesman.

The city is in the midst of a massive $2.5 billion, 40-year effort to modernize its inadequate sewer system.

Tilton, who called Hallam’s death a tragedy, said the city can’t dip into that to remove the dam, even for just $1 million, since the funding is tied to water rates and projects that have been promised to neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is talking to the city to keep the project on track, said Paul Novak, a manager for the state’s surface water division. He indicated the state could provide some money.

Lisa Morgan, the Corps of Engineers’ project manager, said she last talked to the city June 4, three days before Hallam drowned.”

“Their partnership and commitment has been conveyed in a very strong way to us,” Morgan said.

Ansley, a Far North Side resident who lost her 27-year-old son, Benjamin Holt, to heart disease 16 months ago, said she is going to make it her mission to get the 5th Avenue dam removed.

She thinks about the college students living nearby who might attempt the same trip as her son, a 2007 Worthington Kilbourne High School graduate and Mount Union College student.

“Christian loved the water,” she said. Of the dam, she added, “I don’t think he truly knew it was there.”

Funeral services for Hallam were Saturday.

For more information on low-head-dam removals, check this state government Web site: http://ohiodnr.com/water/Home/dsafety/lowhead_dams/default/tabid/3357/Default.aspx

mferenchik@dispatch.com

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was trying to obtain $1.18 million from the federal government to help pay for the 5th Avenue dam removal; Columbus was to provide the rest.

—–

To see more of The Columbus Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.columbusdispatch.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.