YPSILANTI, MI – The Peninsular Dam removal project is getting an $800,000 boost for its fishery and to help endangered and threatened species that could be present in the Huron River.
The $800,000 is one piece of a $70 million investment from The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service going to 43 projects seeking to improve fish passage around outdated or obsolete dams and other barriers fragmenting rivers and streams across the country.
Removing the Ypsilanti dam and returning the 1.25 miles of impoundment to natural stream conditions and reconnecting over three miles of river opens up a “particularly good” habitat for several threatened and endangered mussel species and fisheries unique to southeast Michigan, according to Daniel Brown, watershed planner with the Huron Valley Watershed Council.
According to Brown, the Huron River runs into Ford Lake and has the only self-sustaining walleye population in an inland lake throughout southeast Michigan. Freeing the river will make more space for the walleye and smallmouth bass to reproduce, he said.
The funding will go toward the $10.3 million needed to restore the health of the river and safely manage contaminated sediments at the dam’s impoundment, the reservoir upstream of the dam, and other areas of the river. Such environmental work is the most expensive part of the $14 million project, first approved by the Ypsilanti City Council members in 2019.
Read More: Ypsilanti’s Peninsular Dam removal project seeks $10.3M in additional funding
Less obvious than the fish, mussels “quietly” provide a host of ecological benefits, from filtering toxins to providing food sources to other aquatic life, to streams. Their small size and brown or purplish-black shells often camouflage them to the cobble and rocks on the bottom of the Huron River putting them “out of mind for most folks,” Brown said.
“They’ve gotten less attention just because I think they’re not as charismatic as other organisms,” he said. “They sit there. To many people, they’re pretty difficult to spot.”
The recent grant was awarded to the project with particular concern to those several threatened or endangered mussel species that may be present – or were present before the dam was constructed – in the Huron River.
“The dam is a fundamental impairment to the movement of those mussels,” Brown said. “The mussels move by attaching themselves to fish gills during the larval stage. The fish transport them.”
The presence of these creatures haven’t been confirmed by an official survey, Brown said. However, there are records of state-classified endangered mussel species being found including Elktoe, Purple Wartyback and Wavy-rayed Lampmussel.
Federally endangered mussel species haven’t been found but there is potential those populations are present too. There is evidence they’ve been there in the past and mussel species are in other parts of the river.
“The other thing is that by removing the dam and restoring the river, you suddenly open up the stretch that’s a really good relocation spot for other projects in the future,” Brown said. “So it provides more habitat to repopulate with endangered species.”
An official mussel survey will begin in June, Brown said. If these endangered or threatened species are officially found, they will have to be relocated before dam demolition begins.
The health of the river is just one reason officials say the Peninsular Dam, which once powered the Peninsular Paper Co. and no longer generates electricity, needs to be removed.
Safety and liability concerns, and improving the health of the river, fish, birds, and other wildlife are reasons to demolish the dam, officials have said.
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