The Ministry of Natural Resources will hold an open house next Tuesday (Jan. 14) in Fort Frances to allow residents to ask questions and voice their concerns regarding the future of the Manitou River (Esox Lake) and Footprint Lake dams.
Both have fallen into disrepair and at issue are the options to address the problem.
Due to environmental, social, and hydrological concerns, there are four options to be considered for both dams. They include building new dams, rehabilitating the existing ones, decommissioning the dams entirely, or leaving them as they are.
“That’s not an option, in reality,” MNR area biologist John Van den Broeck said of the latter.
“They’re definitely a safety hazard,” echoed Rachel Hill, an integrated resource management specialist for the area of the Esox dam. “The result of leaving it would be the same as decommissioning it, just without a strategy or planning.
“We don’t do things that way,” she stressed.
Hill said these two dams were earmarked for review under the “Class Environmental Assessment for Small-Scale MNR projects—Dams and Dikes” to address safety concerns associated with the dams “because there isn’t a lot of life left in them.”
Engineers have estimated the remaining lifespan of the dams at roughly five years.
The Esox dam, located north of Devils Cascade, falls on the Manitou River and affects water levels along the entire Manitou watershed stretching 60 miles northeast of the dam (including Esox, the Manitou Stretch, Lower Manitou, and Upper Manitou).
The Footprint dam is located on the southeastern end of that lake and affects water levels in Footprint, Jackfish Lake, and Lake Despair.
Next Tuesday’s public consultation, being held at the MNR office at 922 Scott St., is the first step in the process of addressing the situation. The ministry has not made any decisions regarding the direction to take and at present is not favouring any option openly.
However, the decommissioning of the dams is being focused on because it is the most complex and least understood of the four options.
“The most understandable option to people is to replace the dams,” Van den Broeck said, explaining the end result would be very similar to how things are right now.
“People have a more difficult time understanding an unknown option,” he noted. “We’re not putting any more gravity on any of the scenarios at this time.”
“People hear decommission and think scary things,” added Hill. “We have to show the impacts aren’t as bad as people think.
“Usually when we have these issues, decommission isn’t looked at as an alternative,” she continued. “We kinda want that to be looked at as an alternative.
“We’re hoping people come to the open house, put some thought into it, then form their comments from that.”
Hill said the cost to physically remove the dams is estimated at $200,000 each. The other two options—rehabilitation and reconstruction—carry a heftier price tag of well over $1 million.
“The [Esox] dam is in such a poor state that it’ll cost the same [for both options],” noted Hill. “But we don’t want the decision based on cost.
“If we don’t know what bothers people or what concerns people have, we can’t address them,” she added.
If the dams are decommissioned, the main issues would be how a decrease in water levels will affect properties along the water bodies as well as access to some lakes.
“The entire Footprint Lake would probably drop two metres [six feet],” said Dan Fox, an MNR technician for the Rainy Lake area. “It’s hard to say what would happen to Despair and Jackfish.”
He said the drop in water levels caused by the decommissioning of the Footprint dam would affect tourism, recreation, and private property in the area.
And he conceded areas between the lakes where water levels are close to two metres could cause navigation problems.
“It would reduce it more to a canoe route,” he said of areas linking the three lakes. “It might not be impossible to navigate [by boat].”
But since the only road access to all three lakes is via Lake Despair, that means access to Footprint and Jackfish could be jeopardized and thus some people would not have water or road access to their properties.
“Public input will make a big impact on the decisions,” stressed Fox.
“This is so preliminary,” Van den Broeck said. “We haven’t looked at all the questions around the hydrology and ecology, and how it will affect properties along the watershed.
“If we landed on this option [decommission], we would do a much more comprehensive study.”
“We would look at how everybody would be affected,” agreed Hill.
As a biologist, Van den Broeck admitted he would like to see the best conservation and environmental scenario as possible occur.
He noted that when a dam initially is established, it will change water levels, habitats, and ecosystems, but over a certain length of time, wildlife communities and ecosystems adjust. An equilibrium can be found.
However, the hydrology of the area—that’s how the water flow would occur naturally—won’t do the same.
“When you put a dam in, you are manipulating that pattern,” he said. “It’s artificial water manipulation. Fish and wildlife communities that are there will continue to exist as they did pre-dam.
“The thinking is that the improvement is the restoration of the natural hydrology of the lakes. It will also restore the river environment.
“Ecologically, the closer you are to the natural pattern, the better,” he concluded, adding, “We periodically have issues with the dams that have caused fish and wildlife concerns.”
Van den Broeck explained that since it is a manually-adjusted dam system, mistakes can be made and wildlife can be affected, like nesting loons being accidentally drowned or robbing flow downstream and affecting a fish spawn.
These are things that would be less likely to occur if the hydrology were allowed to fluctuate naturally, he said.
But the operation of the dams isn’t merely to accommodate ecological concerns. Van den Broeck admitted it is an ongoing battle to balance ecological concerns with recreational and other uses.
For instance, the removal of the dams also will affect the fly-in and boat-in fishing industry on both water systems. There are 12 fishing outposts in the Manitou area that would be affected and six in the Footprint dam area.
The Esox dam has a long history. Originally, a rock crib dam was built in 1897, said Van den Broeck, to raise water levels so steamships could navigate the system for the gold mines in the area.
There even were areas where channels were blasted to create more room for the ships that had a large displacement.
“The dam had a long history of repair and disrepair,” said Van den Broeck. “In 1949, there was no water being backed up because it was in such disrepair.”
He explained the current dam was built during the winter in 1952, which added to the poor quality of the concrete.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
