Study will prepare everybody for the day when dams are done

The Bay City Times has this interesting article on the future plans for the dams along the Au Sable River. It suggests that Consumer's Engery will eventually remove the dams or decommission them:

The company [Consumers Energy] is conducting a study to see what it would cost to remove 11 of its 13 hydroelectric dams on Michigan rivers. The study is required as part of a deal relicensing the dams with the federal government for the next 30 years.

There's no hard push from the environmental community to remove the dams. But they will come down, someday.

As communities and companies across the nation are discovering, there comes a point when it is cheaper to tear out an old dam than repair and maintain it.

In 1989, Consumers Energy estimated that it would cost $360 million to remove all of the dams. This year, the company spent $350,000 injecting concrete pillars to strengthen the Five Channels Dam near M-65 on the Au Sable River. The expense to keep the dam in top shape is tiny, so far, compared to any likely cost of removal. But that may change.

The thought of taking out a dam and draining its lake seems dramatic. But, in places where dams have been removed, the change hasn't been as traumatic as some people had feared. Gradual removal of a dam lets accumulated sediment behind it wash away a little at a time. When the dam is finally gone, rivers running naturally see a decline in slow-water fish such as non-native carp and a rise in native fish, such as trout and bass.

Without dams, rivers rise and fall again, washing silt onto their flood plains and sand down to the beaches near their mouths.

It's hard to envision the Au Sable without the Foote, Loud, et al dams and dam ponds but it may happen some day in the not too distant future.