TR: A river reborn

Well, in the rebirthing process, anyway......



A few weeks ago someone made a reference to a dam removal here. As

Wisconsin is known to be a national leader in this laudable endeavor

(over 130 at last count), this prompted me to take a look at what's new

in the months since I last checked. A Google search turned up numerous

hits, the third of which was a link to The River Alliance of Wisconsin

website:



http://www.wisconsinrivers.org/



I immediately noticed that the Alliance and Friends of the Milwaukee

River were co-hosting a "Canoes and Brews" outing, a roughly 7 mile

Trip down the Milwaukee River to a local microbrewery/restaurant, the Rock

Bottom Brewery, scheduled for July 22. After reading up on the latest

dam removal information, I went back and looked at the information on

the "Canoes and Brews." Sounded like fun, so Becky and I signed up.

Friday night, we bought a rack to put on Becky's car (my faithful old

van went to the great parking lot in the sky this past spring), and

Saturday morning found us en route to the Milwaukee River at Lincoln

Park, just about six miles due east of the house.



Among the first arrivals (we pulled in behind the first of the

organizers after inadvertently following them for several blocks), we

sat around for a bit and chatted with other participants. At the

scheduled start time, 11:00 a.m., we began launching boats, a process

that ate up nearly half an hour, in a stagnant and silt-laden backwater

off the main channel. We started out near the back of the pack and

stayed there till after the first of two portages, one of them

around a dam (one of several.....at least four that I've been able to

locate on Google Earth.....that still remain on the river) and the

other around a natural bedrock ledge. Near the end of the first

portage, the entire group assembled to listen to a couple of brief

talks, delivered by the organizers, about some of the environmental

problems that still plague the river.



Foremost among those problems (not surprisingly) is the continued

existence of the few remaining dams. Listening to the spiel, I was

somewhat surprised.....and not altogether pleasantly so.....to discover

a much more moderate stance among the members of both hosting

organizations than I had expected. No fire and brimstone.....no plans

to dynamite the dams by moonlight.....no monkey wrenching. Opposition

to dam removal centers primarily around the usual objections of land

owners along the banks, the abundance of pollutants (most notably, the

ubiquitous PCBs) in the sediments behind the dams, and cost. As I

said, the talks were brief......and it was clear that virtually

everyone wanted to keep them as brief as possible and get back on the water.

Hence, there was little discussion. Had there been, someone would

surely have pointed out that none of the objections have nearly the

force that they once did......and that this is why the pace of dam

removal across the country is accelerating. There is one other (and

increasingly more intractable) problem that is actually exacerbated by

dam removals, and I'll get back to that in a moment.



Nine years ago (seven years before the first "Canoes and Brews") there

would have been one more portage, around the North Avenue dam. The

removal of this dam is one of the great success stories on the river.

Before it was taken out (so we were told on Saturday) there were just 3

species of fish recorded in the stretch that we floated. The most

Recent species count is 30. In the early spring of last year (there

Was still ice in some isolated shady spots), Becky and I floated most of

this same stretch. I was very surprised to see many live mussels and

even a stonefly hatch. Steelhead and salmon (as well as other species,

including the odd brookie) find their way up from Lake

Michigan as far as Thiensville (and possibly further.....I'm not sure),

some 20 miles upstream during their spawning runs, attracting many

eager anglers. Others fish for resident species throughout the season, as
we

saw on our outing last weekend. We were told that they keep and eat

the fish they catch......a practice I think as yet premature. But, great

blue herons are an inevitable sight. Their lesser cousins are

frequently spotted. Kingfishers scold so frequently that one wonders

when they find time to feed. Canada geese and several species of ducks

patrol the banks, guarding their broods against all comers. There are

deer, beavers and even wild turkeys in the greenbelts and on the

parkways. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been

restocking the river with environmentally sensitive sturgeon for

several years (it's too soon the cheer, but there's reason to be hopeful).
The

channel through what used to be the pond behind the dam has been

constricted so as to provide a couple hundred yards of white

water......just a hint of excitement on what is otherwise a supremely

placid stream.



Coming into downtown, less than half a mile beyond the rapids, the

Other major problem on the river comes quickly and forcefully into focus.

Development. Ironically, as water quality improves and the upper

portions of the river within the metropolitan area become aesthetically

more pleasing and biologically healthy, gentrification with its

attendant development will only increase. More green space would be

better, but the land is valuable and will become ever more so as

conditions improve. Historically, Milwaukee has been a major

industrial and commercial center which (like millions of other cities, towns
and

villages) owes its very existence to the river. Factories, warehouses,

and other commercial enterprises line the banks on both sides through

downtown, all the way to the mouth. Or, did. Some still remain, but

many have already been converted into apartments and condos. High rise

office buildings fill the heart of downtown. There is a new "river

walk" lining both sides. In fact, for its last mile and a half the

river no longer has banks......it has walls. Of course, all of this is

better than the indiscriminately polluting ********s it replaces. The

problem of pollutants in the river (including, of course, raw sewage)

was compounded by the fact that there is virtually zero gradient

through downtown......water leaves the river only as it is pushed out

by more water from upstream, and the flow can be reduced to zero when an

east wind blows off the lake and pushes it all back up.



As far back as the third quarter of the 19th century (not so very long

after the city's founding) conditions on the river were so bad that by

1888 the city installed a pump (at 500,000,000 gallons per day it was

the highest capacity pump in the world at the time) near the Lake

Michigan shore that took water from the lake and pumped it half a mile

across the east side to just below the North Avenue dam and dumped it

back into the river, creating an artificial current to flush downtown.

The pump is still used to this day. Even so, the flotsam produced by a

major metropolitan area coats the surface of the river. Despite

various periodic cleanup efforts upstream, a vast amount of floating trash

finds its way to downtown and takes a long time to find its way through and

into the lake (not so, unfortunately, for massive amounts of sewage

that still shoot through the system, due to what is presumably some

sort of ill-conceived connection between the sewers and the storm drains,

every time a major storm comes through).



Fortunately, these matter didn't weigh heavily on us for most of the

trip. Much more troublesome for most were the frequent groundings in

shallow water before getting to the greater depths in downtown. Even

in very shallow draft canoes an kayaks, no one failed to find the bottom

frequently. However, the tedium of lurching and poling and scraping

was relieved by watching the many newbies do (or try to do) the same. In

the intervals, most people (yeah, there are always a few who can find a

way to be miserable) enjoyed the opportunities the placid water

afforded to talk with old friends and new and to enjoy the scenery;

despite its urban setting, the river's banks are mostly heavily timbered

through most of its length.



This has been a very busy year for me. This outing was my first

opportunity to get out in the kayak since last fall. It was great to be

on the water again. Feeling a bit frisky after a couple hours of drifting

and desultory paddling, I picked up the pace and fifteen minutes later

found myself very near the front of the pack. Settling into the groove,

I poured it on to keep up with a couple of kayakers who pulled out

ahead of the rest. Half a mile from the takeout I started to dig hard

and finished alone at the Rock Bottom dock. A few minutes later someone

paddled up and informed me that everyone else was getting out a bit

upstream...we weren't supposed to come all the way down to Rock

Bottom in the boats.



Oh.



Well, having made it safely out of my boat and onto a much higher dock

under the expectant gaze of a hundred pair of eyes on the patio, I wasn't

about to tempt fate by trying to get back in it. Instead, I dragged it the

length of the dock and then boosted it up a seven foot concrete wall and

the three foot steel rail above it. By far, the hardest work of the day.



Becky and I spent the next hour or so sitting on the patio, next to the
river,

sharing appetizers and beer with some of our new friends. Most of the

crew were seated in the indoor dining room..odd, on such a beautiful day.



The RAW and the FMR will be co-hosting a moonlight paddle from the

Milwaukee Rowing Club's facility at the north end of downtown to the

mouth of the river and back in celebration of the full moon on the evening
of

August 8. Details can be found at the above listed website. I'll be there.



Moonlight and city lights...anybody in the neighborhood should come on

down and join us..should be a good time.



Wolfgang