Meadow Run dam removed
This is a view of Meadow Run at Ohiopyle State Park since a dam, which stood in the stream for decades was removed and the streambank improved. Additional photos can be seen on HeraldStandard.com.
Heavy equipment was brought in to remove a dam on Meadow Run at Ohiopyle State Park that impeded fish movement and created a safety hazard for anglers and others who visited the creek.
Large stones are broken up so they can be removed from the creek after the decades-old dam on Meadow Run was demolished.
Logs are fixed into place around a curve on Meadow Run to stop erosion of the bank. The 125-foot log stream bank, known as a modified mud sill, is elevated high enough off the creek bottom to create hiding cover for fish.
Meadow Run in Ohiopyle State Park has quietly become a better home for fish and a safer place for anglers.
A dam, which was located just upstream from the white water outfitters’ parking lot off of Route 381, was removed and stream bank improvement work was performed last summer without fanfare.
“Rebar was protruding from the concrete dam creating a hazard for anglers and others who visited the creek”, said Stacie Hall, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resource’s (DCNR) assistant park manager.
‘An angler who slipped and fell into the creek could have been trapped under water by the dam and the structure posed a threat to kayakers who paddle the stream when the later level is high enough,” said Mark Sausser, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s (PFBC) fish habitat manager for northwest and southwest regions.
“It was for public safety and it has greatly improved the fishery there,” Sausser said.
“The creek is a well known trout fishing destination, but it also holds suckers, which don’t jump and couldn’t migrate due to the dam,” said Sausser, who designed the dam removal and stream bank project in 2007.
In addition to the dam removal, about 400 feet of stream bank improvement work was done upstream from the dam site.
Logs were fixed into place around a curve in the creek and the stream bank between the logs and an old stone wall, which supports the access road, was restored. The creek had been eroding the bank around the curve endangering the wall and the road.
“That whole shore line has an old rock wall. We feared that the bend in the creek would erode the bank and endanger the road,” Hall said.
The 125-foot log stream bank, known as a modified mud sill, is elevated high enough off the creek bottom to create hiding cover for fish.
“The stream was almost touching the stone wall. We made 15 feet of stream bank between the wall and the creek channel,” Sausser said. “(The sill) prevents bank erosion and gives fish overhead cover from predators.”
Sausser said he and two men who work for a contractor hired by the DCNR drilled holes in the logs and then secured them to the creek bottom with rebar.
“More logs were installed in the creek channel to direct water back into the original channel, which gradually become blocked over the years due to the sediment build caused by the dam,” he said. Those logs, which also were installed like the modified mud sill, also have a technical name.
“What we built there were multi-log vane deflectors to get the central flow back into the middle of the stream,” Sausser said. “It causes a scour pool to provide habitat for fish so they can get to deeper water during the dry summer and provides overhead cover. They rebuild the bank by building sediment. They stick out into the stream channel to push water into the channel.”
The modified mud sill and multi-log vane deflectors are designed to make the creek look like it did before the dam was built.
“Once the dam is taken out the stream finds its own little pattern. We give it help by putting these devices in,” Sausser said. “It will probably take another year or two for a new stream channel to get established. Years of stone and sediment takes years to get flushed away to restore the original stream channel.
“The logs also provide places for aquatic insects to burrow, lay eggs and hide from predators,” he said.
“The new streambank passed a major test by standing strong against high and fast water from spring rain and runoff,” Hall said.
“The area where the dam was located was private property and the owner built the dam to create a small impoundment for swimming and fishing. The dam had been partially breached several years ago.
“The home was a summer getaway owned by the owner of regional lumber supply company that no longer exists,” said Ohiopyle resident David Whipkey, a local historian and former park ranger.
“It was a beautiful stone home with huge picture windows and an in-ground pool,” Whipkey said. “The state purchased the property in the late 1960s and the state park’s first superintendent Charles Ray lived there for a couple years before it was demolished in the early 1970s.”
A pier for handicapped people to fish at the old dam was replaced after the dam was removed.
The $80,0000 that paid for the project came from the state Department of Transportation (PennDOT), which gave the money to the PFBC to mitigate 600 feet of stream loss that resulted from construction work at the Smithton interhcange on Interstate 70, according to PennDOT spokesman Valerie Petersen.
The PFBC directed the money to American Rivers, a national organization that advocates for removal of dams that are no longer in use, to administer the project.
“We have a lot of experience in dam removal,” said Lisa Hollingsworth-Segedy, of American Rivers’ Pittsburgh office. “We’ve removed over 100 in Pennsylvania and over 1,000 in the country.”
She said, “PennDOT is required to mitigate damages it does to a stream by improving another stream.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and Trout Unlimited also had input into the project, Hall said.