Undaming the Elwha

[Tom L]

Lately, the Elwha River has been mentioned often in magazines and news. This is a wonderful documentary film about undaming the Elwha. Make me wondering what the Fox River would be liked if all the dams are gone.

[mikea]

No undaming here in Illinois, we keep the dams and add play parks to the dams for special interest groups.

[Mike G]

I finally got around to watching this. All along I knew it would be worth it.

 

 

The similarity between a west coast river dam and a dam on the Fox is hard to figure out. My take is that both dams were good in their times while the original purpose for building them is no longer valid.

 

Thanks for putting this up.

[Bart Durham]

An article in Sun Times yesterday mentioned removal of Hoffman Dam on Des Plaines river last year has already improved fishing conditions on Des Plaines river. Also, a number of mature tagged smallmouth were released into the river, similar to release in Dupage River last year, in attempt to give kick start to smallie population regeneration in the river. Here is link to article written by Dale Bowman.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/outdoors/15660410-452/fishing-outdoors-removal-of-dam-has-transformed-des-plaines-river.html

[Mike Antikauskas]

Very interesting and informative. Thanks for posting this!!

[Guest rich mc]

never knew they took out the hoffman dam. in 7th grade i would ride my bike there and carp fish in the foam. had a 40th reunion for pershing grade school last year and some of us talked about fishing there. rich mc

[Mike G]

never knew they took out the hoffman dam. in 7th grade i would ride my bike there and carp fish in the foam. had a 40th reunion for pershing grade school last year and some of us talked about fishing there. rich mc

 

Me too. Though I never fished there, it was on my route to work for many years. Does anyone else remember the year when foam used to put out a fire at O'Hare was washed into the DesPlaines. When it got to the dam, it was churned into huge banks of foam. It seems that the drains in the hanger flushed directly into the river rather than the airport storm system. Another bump in the road for da mayor's airport.