The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's green-lighting of a permit for the city of Ann Arbor to begin construction of a bypass channel at Argo Dam means the clearing of another literal roadblock for paddle traffic on the Huron River.
By next spring, it'll be bon voyage to the Argo Dam portage, which required paddlers to exit the water and hump their vessels to the other side of the dam. Think of it as the kind of project the RiverUp! initiative, a large-scale effort to make the Huron healthier and more accessible, is advocating.
You could call it a ground breaking project, as the bulk of the work consists of moving earth to sculpt out the millrace embankment around Argo Dam, says Molly Wade, water treatment services manager for the city of Ann Arbor. Stone will be used to create a chain of drop pools in the bypass channel. The pools will, over a 1,500-foot span, gradually lower paddlers 13 feet from Argo Pond to the river. "They are designed so that a novice canoer can maneuver them with no problem," Wade says.
"Our goal was to increase the usability of the millrace and to eliminate the canoe portage so that people of all ages and walks could canoe down the river with ease," she says.
The whitewater feature planned for the main river channel should be installed after DTE completes contamination remediation work in 2012, Wade says. In exchange for the city delaying the whitewater construction until after the remediation, DTE has committed to covering the cost of this feature for more experienced paddlers wanting a river rush.
Construction begins on August 25 and should be largely complete in the next four to five months, with only landscaping and paving of the riverside pedestrian path (part of the Border to Border Trail) to be done in spring 2012.
"We should be able to open for the start of the canoe season next year. That's our goal," Wade says.
Source: Molly Wade, water treatment services manager for the city of Ann Arbor
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
Argo Dam bypass rendering courtesy of city of Ann Arbor
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