USGS Multimedia Gallery: (Video)--Alternative to Dam Removal: Wisconsin Fish Passage Project Milwaukee River at Thiensville, Wisconsin

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Faith: We're at the Thiensville-Mequon

Dam standing next to a very innovative

fish passage project. It's part of the

National Fish Passage Program. I have

Will Wawryzn standing with us who is

gonna give a little overview of the site

and what's going on here today.

Will: Thiensville-Mequon Dam is located

about 20 miles upstream of the Milwaukee

River confluence with Lake Michigan.

Historically, the Milwaukee River

Estuary was one of the most productive

estuaries in the Lake Michigan basin for

fish and wildlife, tens of thousands of

acres of wetlands. Since European

settlement, most, if not all, of that

resource base has been lost through

modifications, engineered banks, filling

of the wetlands and so on. In addition,

the lower 15 miles of this 20-mile reach

of the Milwaukee River is heavily

urbanized. Many of the tributary streams

have been greatly modified primarily to

account for changes in land use.

They've been channelized, deepened,

widened. Their hydrology has undergone

some great modifications as a result of

all the engineered storm-sewer drainage

that goes into them. And so what we're

staring at here is probably the first

major impediment to everyone's goal of

restoring sustainable fisheries from

Lake Michigan, from the Milwaukee River

Estuary upstream. From this point on,

and a short distance downstream, a lot

of that historical habitat, spawning

habitat for some of our target species,
still exist.

For example, Northern Pike, which are

very dependent on wetland habitat for

completing their spawning runs and

juvenile development. We have an active

restoration project for Lake Sturgeon,

near the village of Newburg, with the

DNR and the River Edge Nature Center

folks. We know, for instance, that many

of the sucker species, including Red

Horse, and Smallmouth Bass will migrate

tens of miles to reach historical

spawning ground. So this is sort of the

next major impediment that is gonna be

eliminated on the lower Milwaukee River.

Historically over 13 dams have been

removed in the lower Milwaukee River Basin.

There's one that's currently being

removed in Grafton and another one,

where the Ozaukee County staff is

working with a number of different

agencies to construct another fishway.

This fishway is about 1100 feet long.

It's had to be increased by a length of

about 66% because of riparian issues

related to keeping a pool of water in

perpetuity when they transferred

ownership of the millway to the village.

We're at sort of the final tweaking

phase of the project where we're

adjusting some of the elevations through

the spine of the fishway, adjusting the

dimensions of the channel to decrease

velocities to make it easier for fish to

move up the fishway.

And, as a result, we'll have a test flow

through the system probably within the

next week. Aside from making some final

adjustments on the fishway itself, we'll

be doing some landscaping with native

plants in the next couple of days, and

we've also been fortunate to have a

number of volunteers from the Milwaukee

Service Community Center.

Matt: Community Service Corps.

Will: Service Corps. They've brought in

at least 16 individuals to help us do

some fine tuning on the weirs, as well

as to adjust and make some modifications

to the biologs for purposes of

landscaping and bioengineered banks, as

well as some volunteers from Milwaukee

River Keepers and some residents in the

basin, a total of 24 people today. So

we're very excited. They've made short

notice on some of the last few items we

had to complete for this project.

Faith: Tom, tell us a little bit about

the regional plan for the area.

Tom: Sure. Projects like this are

extremely vital because one of the

things we found as part of the regional

water quality management plan for the

Great Lakes watersheds here which

includes the Milwaukee, the Root and the

Menomonee Rivers and the areas

surrounding there, is that fragmentation

due to dams and roadway, culverts, and

bridges, among other aspects in these

stream channels are absolutely

fragmenting fisheries populations and

decreasing their abilities to access

areas for food and for shelter, and then

for natural reproduction into certain areas.

So it is a vital component and essential

to the overall future for recovery of

these species and for the abundance and

diversity, and maintenance of the

abundance and diversity, for native

fishes, which is why the Recovery Act

monies are so huge for the entire area and this region.

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