Today we’re visiting Black Brook & Maxwell Pond Dam (MPD) in Manchester with Steve Landry, Coastal, oh no wait, Merrimack Watershed Supervisor. 😉
Many thanks to Steve for these great photos & captions:
These images are from Black Brook and Maxwell Pond where the dam was removed in 2009 to restore freely flowing waters and aquatic organism passage within Black Brook for the first time in over a century.
In the first two photos, Jeff Marcoux was performing survey work to build channel profiles and cross sections to monitor the transformation of Black Brook from impoundment to flowing stream system. The last two pictures show pre- and post dam removal conditions.
Project partners included DES, EPA, the City of Manchester, National Grid, Trout Unlimited, The NH State Conservation Committee Moose Plate Program, Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, NOAA, American Rivers, NH Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership, Fairpoint Communications, Aggregate Industries, Dubois & King, Inc, Amoskeag Fishways, NH Fish and Game, E.W. Poore. As you can see, it takes a “village” to remove a dam and restore a river!
1. Balmy Survey – Jeff Marcoux, much like Santa and his team of Reindeer are not thwarted by fog, ice, or high waters when there is work to get done! Sure, a summer survey would have been more comfortable, but where is the challenge in that?
2. Jeff in the thalweg – On the 5th day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 5 frozen toes, 4 blue fingers, 3 degrees of wind chill, 2 hours of hypothermia, 1 inch of surface ice, and a cold lunch waiting for me.
3. Pre Dam Removal at MPD – kind of says it all, really, but my winter hat is kind of kooky.
4. Post Dam Removal at MPD – self explanatory.
Only two days left of photo blogging! Send your pictures today…. sally.soule@des.nh.gov