Great Lakes Restoration: One Community at a Time Toolkit

Lake Michigan: Village of Hersey
Hersey River Dam: Cycles in the Life of a Place

Rivers. Whenever humans settle on their banks, something changes. The flow of water has drawn human settlement for thousands of years. During that time, rivers have served all kinds of purposes for the communities that take root beside them. Sometimes a river is a source of water for drinking. Sometimes it's a source of transportation. Sometimes it provides power for mills and other forms of economic development that a community requires to thrive and grow.

And sometimes it's in a community's best interest to let the river run freely after more than a century of providing energy for economic engines. Sometimes freeing a river is a natural part of the cycles of the life of a place.

When a dam was built in the mid-1800s just upstream from the confluence of the Hersey and Muskegon Rivers, the growing village on the river's bank needed lumber milled for its buildings, and it needed grain ground to feed its people. The river gave exactly what the community needed in order to prosper in a pioneering time. But by 1941, the dam was falling apart, and no longer played a role in the commercial life of the community. Residents shored up the dam and it became little more than a community pond for swimming. Kids loved it for its warmed up waters, but trout and other fish trying to move upstream found both the dam and the warmed water it released to be an obstacle.

"The Hersey Dam, in the minds of the state of Michigan was one of the top three or four dams on their list of dams that they wanted to see taken out," says Gary Noble, who became Executive Director of the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly (MRWA) in 2001. "It was a high priority site primarily because of its dilapidated condition. It was one of the more dangerous dams. It was in the most decrepit condition compared to the other ones. But, at the same time, the Hersey River, further upstream, is considered in the top 15 % for coldwater fisheries. So, they realized that this is a very high quality stream, and they had a very dilapidated dam structure that was violating temperature standards. Even before the MRWA [got involved], the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had been trying to work with the village of Hersey to come up with a mutually agreeable manner to remove the dam. And the village and the DNR were not seeing eye-to-eye on things."

This is when the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly entered the picture, and helped to shift the grounds of discussion from being focused only on the pond and dam as an obstacle to be removed, to a conversation about the community's relationship to its river. That shift took place through careful building of trust among all the players-local, state and national-facilitated by the Watershed Assembly.

One of the first things that Noble did on behalf of MRWA was to start working with the Village of Hersey officials and the DNR to offer assistance for getting the dam out.

"We tried to basically say, 'Here, we're here to help,'" Noble says. "We're not here to force anything down your throat. We're here to help you. And would you please take the time to at least listen to some other agencies, even at the federal level as to the merits of doing something like this, as well as some possibilities for getting some funding assistance?"

He organized a meeting with Hersey Village elected officials, DNR, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps). The Army Corp's Aquatic Ecosystem Protection and Restoration Program had monies available for assisting with dam removal, and MRWA saw that Hersey Dam was a good candidate for the program. They arranged for a presentation to the Village officials and offered to lead the application process and fundraising for the Village's 35% cost share. The Village, with nothing to lose, had no objection.

"During this process, every time I met, or talked with village folks-whether it was the village president or the council people, or in our newsletters or any communication we had, we reiterated the environmental values of taking out the dam, and why we were in it," Noble says. "We went out of our way to explain to them-to make it very clear-why we were involved. It wasn't because we were going to get anything out of it moneywise, necessarily. We wanted to restore natural stream, free-flowing conditions to the Hersey River in the lower part of the river. We made it very clear from the get-go that that was our interest, that's why we were there. So they knew we were legit. They knew we didn't have a hidden agenda. I think they felt very comfortable with the fact that they knew up front from us, from the start, why we were in the game."

This clarity of purpose and communication was crucial to building trust among village officials. And in the way that small towns often work, the elected officials became the best communicators to the rest of the community about the project.

"It all started from the local officials outward," Noble says. "The MRWA did our primary communication with the village president and the council. And the council and the president then took that information and spread it through the village. We didn't do very much with the village public. But the primary mechanism for getting the public in the Village of Hersey on board was through the village council and the president."

There was an additional challenge, however. Contaminated sediments immediately upstream from the dam, as well as a smaller contaminated site downstream, made the dam ineligible for the Army Corp program. Residuals from an upstream creosote company's operations had settled out around the dam, creating hotspots of toxic contamination.

Independent of the Village and the Watershed Assembly's efforts, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) approached Beazer East Company, the current property owner that inherited the creosote site's liabilities. The company agreed to foot 100% of the bill for cleaning up the contamination. Under supervision by the DEQ, Beazer East removed approximately 900 cubic yards of contaminated sediment around Hersey dam during 2002-3. The DEQ gave the site a clean bill of health, allowing the dam to meet Army Corps eligibility.

Two additional public meetings during 2003 with Village officials, MRWA, and the DNR helped to confirm and clarify the community's objectives for removal of the dam structures-- eliminating public safety concerns and restoring the river to natural stream conditions.

By the end of 2003, the MRWA had completed the Army Corps application for the Village, Army Corps accepted it, and they were assigned a project manager. Everything was in place for the first phase of engineering work to start - until the United States went to war in Iraq. Army Corps money dried up, and the Watershed Assembly was told that the delay was indefinite.

Not to be denied, the MRWA pursued other means to fund the preliminary engineering work; receiving $5,000 from the DNR Inland Fisheries Program, and a commitment from the Wege Foundation to match 1:1 monies raised.

The Watershed Assembly and partners (the Village and the DNR) selected two firms, to do side-by-side preliminary engineering work. The partners selected Prein & Newhof's proposal which was less expensive and used a more natural controlled drawdown method. Their proposed work included removing all structures and restoring the river's natural channel. The controlled drawdown method involved the dam being drained slowly. As sediments and structures became exposed, they were to be removed and the ground stabilized with vegetation. This approach to dam removal had never been tried in the region on a dam as large as the Hersey dam, but the engineers at Prein & Newhof did their homework with the DEQ and the DNR to see whether such a "working with nature" approach was viable. Prein & Newhof's preliminary engineering work resulted in an estimate of $262,300 for the project. The partners accepted their work proposal in May 2005.

The Watershed Assembly had already invested a good deal of staff time into researching funding options, but once they had a formal cost estimate they started looking in earnest. They took the $262,300 estimate and added a small amount to cover their costs for project management and fiscal agent services. The total needed was $274,000. Ultimately, they received a bit more funding than they actually needed. They did not receive every grant for which they applied, but they applied for more funding than was necessary. This was obviously a key to ensure success: pursue multiple sources simultaneously. By Accepting the Watershed Assembly's offer of help, and participating in the process of planning for the dam's removal, the Village of Hersey found a way to get a quarter of a million dollar project completed with only a $1,000 expense to the community itself.

With full funding in place, the Watershed Assembly issued a local media release and published an announcement in their newsletter for a May 2006 public meeting. At this event, attended by more than 60 of the area's residents, the Watershed Assembly and Prein & Newhof conducted a public tour of the dam site, reviewed all aspects of the planned dam removal project, and answered questions. This meeting demonstrated strong public support for the project.

At this point, all that was needed was the permit for the work, which the DEQ issued in September 2006. By October 13, all dam structures were removed. By early November, restoration was complete, with 1,800 shoots of willows, dogwoods, high bush cranberry, and other native tree species planted on both sides of the river. The Hersey River is now flowing freely and cutting a new channel through the Village of Hersey for the first time in over 150 years.

Village leaders are delighted with the outcome of the dam removal, and the Watershed Assembly and its governmental partners have been thrilled with the natural engineering approach. The controlled draw-down approach to removing the dam has the potential to be a cost-effective, creative way to remove other structures in the region. By working with an innovative company, the Watershed Assembly has helped to build the capabilities in the region for similar dam removals elsewhere. The Watershed Assembly envisions pursuing similar dam removals with some of the same partners. In addition to the four dams on the Muskegon River's main stem, there are 89 structures disrupting flow throughout its tributaries.

The initial resistance to the removal of the Village of Hersey dam has given way to excitement in the village about a renewed sense of place and possibility based on a free flowing river. The village hopes to connect the park at the dam site with an existing, community owned park. This plan, which will be pursued through village residents' own efforts may result in additional habitat restoration driven directly by the local community.

The Village of Hersey has not only renewed its connection to the river, but also built its own capacity for carrying out ambitious plans related to restoration. The cycle is now complete.

Five Stories

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Additional copies of the packet are available by calling (231) 348-8200 or emailing info@freshwaterfuture.org.

Freshwater Future builds effective community-based citizen action to protect and restore the water quality of the Great Lakes basin. We work toward this goal by providing financial assistance, communications and networking assistance and technical assistance to citizens and grassroots watershed groups throughout the Great Lakes basin. Through these efforts we work with over 1,800 grassroots watershed groups and citizens to protect and restore the rivers, lakes and wetlands in their communities. Freshwater Future, Inc. is a non-profit organization.

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