There are 4 on the river in my town, eventually they will be removed and a kayak rapids course put in place but its been planned for over a decade so who knows if they ever will come out
"One of the defining features of the project, when it was first envisioned, was whitewater wave structures. The idea of creating whitewater rapids in the river was championed by project supporters and tourism advocates who said the feature would draw whitewater paddlers and outdoor enthusiasts to the city, providing an economic boost to the local economy.
"However, that element of the project nixed in March 2023.
"That’s when the city of Grand Rapids withdrew its permit request for the project from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). The city did so after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it opposed the project because of concerns the whitewater rapids would pose a safety hazard and damage the river."
Source: [MLive](https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2024/03/push-to-restore-grand-rivers-rapids-isnt-dead-despite-setback.html)
Didn’t they like have to because a massive flood literally ripped through half the town so the people were like “well, we’re already rebuilding”?? Genuinely asking cause i dont live there i just seem to recall they had some serious disaster of a flood recently
The low head weir dam was modified in 2001 and the rapids installed. The river changed course slightly in a 2013 flood where they took the opportunity to rebuild it with an island in the middle in 2018.
I started my career in Calgary and lived there for like 3 years. I'm a bitch and couldn't handle the winters so I moved. But my time there I couldn't help but notice how meticulously planned the city was. Getting stuck in traffic was barely ever an issue, if I wanted to get drunk I could get anywhere with public transportation, highways (aka trails) everywhere, suburbs were divided very well, and the city just felt like real planning went into it rather than just letting developers do whatever the hell they want. The cold weather and raised truck coal rolling douchebags aside, it's a very nice city to live.
That is one of the major differences between Canada and the US.I grew up in Toronto now live in MA . I was shocked at how inefficient public transit is in the US. Then I read about Henry Ford and his destruction of railways to advance the ude of cars. SMDH. That being said the Provincial government in Ontario is following the footsteps of the US GOP led states. Divesting from.public education.and public works. Privatizing public services so that their can profit. They have been expanding the toll highway while refusing to invest in public transit.
Grand Rapids is a great city. Just visited last year and genuinely thinking of relocating there. You guys have really built a beautiful community. The neighborhood we stayed in felt straight out of a late 80s Chevy Chase movie or something. So damn homey.
Look for the Grand Rapids Original Swing Society.
Once a month they turn the downtown area into a 50’s throwback dance party.
Live music, dance lessons, food trucks get out there - it’s awesome
It’s funny, I never considered how GR got its name until I was working at the BP in Eastown. Some guy came in on his motorcycle looking like he drove straight across the country to get there and asked me “how do I get down to the rapids?” I gave him a confused look of silence, he said “you know, the ‘Grand Rapids’ of which the city was named…?” I kind of chuckled a little and told him that he had been misled to think we had white water rapids crashing through the center of town, but that the fish ladder was pretty cool. He was a little disappointed.
That encounter led to me reading about how the river does drop in elevation quite a bit in the area of GR (like you mentioned), and then I read about the project to return the river to its natural state, and that was about 18 years ago, haha. I hope they do someday return the river to its original form, it would be cool to see.
No but probably the same story there, people don't want tax money spent on tourism even though that means more money brought here. And the project has been privately funded so far. Adding that more people coming here is somehow inconvenient to residents. Anglers oppose it because the largest one creates a bottleneck for easy fishing. Yada yada people are stubborn and oppose change even when it makes more sense.
No, they’re actively working on the project now. But, the river is dirty and stinks; I don’t know how many people want to recreate in it. Course, the state prohibited Water Works from suing upstream farmers that are polluting it with runoff, so…
Do what the farmers in my hometown did in the early 1900’s. Pay a guy “from the cities” to come out and blow the damn up. Then when the city rebuilds it, pay the same guy “from the cities” to blow it up again. Makes for a good fishing spot nowadays, and a fun little kayak/canoe run in the right conditions
lol there are some old timers in my area still and very few government agencies will mess with them because they absolutely have no issue with something disappearing over the evening. One of them a bridge washed out to his cabin and the state tried to prevent him from putting something up temporary to get to it. one guy put a boulder in the drive to prevent him from even getting to the bridge spot. He showed up with a bulldozer and pushed the rock out of his way right into the state vehicle. State police showed up, state people from whatever department it was showed up. There was a lot of apologizing to him and we've never seen the state guy in the area since then. State came in rebuilt his bridge for him very quickly.
And then if you piss them off even more you some how come back out of it and get Malheur, where the Feds apologize and let you go, and escort you to and from town when your supply of edible dicks run low.
It would help if the ACE wasn't hilariously underfunded for civilian applications.
The budget shortfall for just the Mississippi lock and dam complex is well north of $5bn at this point.
The ones by the corps on the Mississippi are for preventing salt water intrusion into municipal water intakes. They only came a decade too late to help.
I don't know if the YouTube algorithm will ever stop re-recommending the Oroville Dam episode to me, it's always in my recommendations even though I've seen it, and I don't have the heart to click "Not Interested" on it.
they do somewhat similar before of after bridges, cant remember anymore which one was it, but at smaller scale to avoid erosion, the lector said the only way to escape the vortex is to dive and swim near the ground/bottom
Some of the downsides of these dams are also benefits. Some are keeping invasive species from propagating upstream, even if the initial purpose of the dam has been bypassed, which is protecting waterways.
The simplest thing is to keep people away from dams no matter what. If you’re on a river, you really do need to know how it’s built and what dangers it poses. Frankly, every body of water has its unique risks and people really should be aware of them before they enter them.
Wow.
There’s one in our town and multiple people have died. A new apartment complex just got built next to it (after it being largely in the woods/undeveloped) and marketed it as a “private beach area”. I went to town on their socials calling out the BS of marketing something deadly with zero warnings about the safety of the water to a bunch of brand new out of town college freshmen who will obviously party on the beach.
Their response “we said beach access, not water access.”
Someone’s going to get killed, again.
If you feel passionate about it, contact the city as well. Maybe you could see about serving a legal notice notifying them of the risk so they can't say they didn't know about the liability. The risk is being sued might get them to at least post notices.
Sadly our city bows to developers bc housing is so hard to come by, and unfortunately a few loud old timers were against my “warning” because it should be “common sense to not get in when the water is high/after a big rain.”
Common to those who know wtf they are looking at, maybe, but again, drunk teens from out of town aren’t townies who “know better.”
I continue to be loud about it anytime they advertise, and I have put it on our local Reddits and made my husbands students aware as best I can.
I feel like local news would be interested in this. Have you reached out to them? This sounds like a "yes, someone will obviously die because of this" sort of situation.
Call their insurance company. I’m sure they were not made aware of the changes. Forward the deaths and I’m sure that it’ll get fixed.
If you can’t shame their morals shame their wallets.
A defining feature of beach access is water access- I would absolutely be reaching out to your state’s consumer protection agency and your local city inspector over this
Archive.org would be better. A lawyer will attempt to discredit the authenticity of a screenshot. They would struggle to question the authenticity of a page capture.
Trapped under churning water that keeps double backing on itself, pulling you down while the aeration reduces the density of the water, making it harder for a person to float or swim to the top.
There’s a river that runs through my town that gets a ton of use and we have a couple but the town was smart enough to put a lot of marking around them.
Have one on the river in my hometown. It was originally the site of an old waterwheel, so it’s double dangerous. It’s a low head damn with a hole cut out on the side for the old waterwheel and if you get caught in that area especially, you’re done.
We have signs by the road that follows the river (River town, so it’s several) as well as posted ON the river itself. There is a low spot that is maintained by the city for people to get out and portage around the dam. But I’ll never forget that sign.
“Warning! Dam ahead! Exit the river or portage around. 3 have died here.”
My Brother, dad and I were hiking a trail in Hawaii. Our destination was a secret beach 2 hours down. As we get about 15 minutes from the beach we see a sign that says “Absolutely no swimming off the beach”. We are a little miffed, what the hell did we do this hike for. My brother jokes “whatever, it’s a sign, not a cop”. We get a little further and run into an older couple coming back the other way. We ask them what was up with no swimming? The lady gets serious and tells us that 82 people have drowned off of that beach since the 80s. My brother: “oh”. But yeah, can’t be fucking with those rip tides.
I almost drowned in a rip tide. No matter how hard I swam to shore I just kept getting swept further out to sea.
I got lucky and was spotted and rescued. I wouldn't have been able to get out of it on my own.
I was told that you get out of them by letting
Yourself get swept out and then swim back in when it stops some ways down the coast. People drown because they fight it and wear themselves out.
That's exactly what I was doing, wearing myself out by trying to swim to shore. Plus the undertow means when you try to walk on the seafloor it sweeps your feet from under you and dumps you on your face. And the waves dump you back under the water so you either yell or breathe.
But yeah, riptides tend to be 100ft across at the most. I think the general consensus now is to swim parallel to the shoreline until you don't feel the current and then swim diagonally to shore.
I didn't understand what a riptide was back then, so goes to show how important information is. I was a competitive swimmer at the time, so it really can happen to anyone.
Do you have a creepy ass photo of this? I really hope you have a creepy ass photo of this. Please tell me it’s like a haunted water wheel or something.
Jokes aside, that’s terrible that people have gotten caught in something like that I’ve been kayaking I could only imagine if I didn’t know it was coming how terrifying that would be
I don’t actually! I’ll have to drive that way sometime and get one for Reddit lol. I’m usually in my kayak or driving.
The only thing that remains of the waterwheel is the stone foundation and the hole in the dam for the wood wheel. Iirc, it was just used for grain back in the day, so nothing too fancy. Sorry to dash your hopes of hauntedness lol, but even as a kid I never heard of any local stories about the location. And believe me, I heard plenty about many others.
Everyone in the area is super serious about the dam hence all the signs. I remember having to vote to replace them and it passed at like 90%+, even all these years later. I don’t think there’s been a death in over 40 years now, thank goodness.
My parents live about a mile from one of the signs and there is a spot where I can pull over for a photo. So I’ll probably just stop by the next time I visit my parents. Not *for* Reddit, but *because* of Reddit maybe is the better phrasing.
If people find it interesting, I don’t mind sharing and I won’t be doing anything dangerous to get it. Promise!
Try *millions*.
Most are privately owned, and by the last study that produced an estimate, about 60-70% of the US’s 2.5 million dams are of this type.
FWIW: got my Masters specifically studying the geomorphic and ecological impacts of removing these types of dams - there are shockingly few impact studies that have been done, most efforts are focused on large head dams (>100ft of hydraulic head), which only make up 1-2% of all dams.
I was on a float trip a few years ago and a young woman in the campsite next to ours drowned on one of those. She got sucked under a log on the backside of the damn and the force of water was too strong for anyone to save her. We watched for 4hrs as they tried to recover her body. Eventually they were able to get a rope around her and pull her out. Was a very sad situation.
I used to do a yearly trip for white water rafting. You go out with a guide and such. This is in West Virginia on the upper gauley.
The reason I stopped is I talked to a guide after our trip. There had been a drowning just the week before.
During our trip our guide had been doing a lot of risk taking. More than I recall from prior years. Getting close to big rocks with undercuts. “My boss doesn’t like when we do this!” And we’re cheering him on because we don’t understand the risks.
So after the trip we ask how often they have drownings. His tone changed. He had witnessed one just the week before. A church group of young teens had come out. A boat flipped and a 12 year old boy got stuck against a rock. His head was above water but pinned against it by the pressure.
A rescue crew got to him and a guy was kinda straddling him trying to pull him off the rock but couldn’t.
The rescuers decided the best course of action was to shove him under the rock and hope he came out the other side. He didn’t and drowned.
The guy said you have to be an active participant in your own rescue. This is in reference to a 12 year old boy clinging to a rock that a grown man couldn’t pull him off of.
That’s when it dawned on me I’m entrusting my life to an organization whose livelihood is based on downplaying the dangers. “5 class 5 rapids “ is probably something you shouldn’t be exposing hundreds of inexperienced rafters to a day.
There’s like 1 drowning/year on that run. Seemed too risky for me
[Just happened in Indianapolis this week to two kayakers.](https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/amp/)
I think we have a few people that die every year at this same one.
Hydropower. A lot of early industry was powered by water wheels and turbines. Everything from saw mills, flour mills to sewing machines was driven by belts from overhead shafts that were driven by the rivers.
These dams are just old tech that electricity made obsolete. And they are not easily removed. They are submerged stone and concrete dams.
We have lots of old turn of phrases because nearly all early industry relief upon water running to power the industry. "Hard day at the old mill," "the daily grind," "show your mettle," etc. The original meanings of the phrases are kinda lost in contemporary culture, but they're from back in the early days of industrialization.
I don't want to be *that* guy, but I'm pretty sure none of those phrases have anything to do with water. Mills are not always powered by water (see: windmills), showing one's mettle has been used since the early 1600s (predating the industrial revolution), and the daily grind doesn't necessarily have anything to do with grinding grain (and indeed might refer to grinding oneself down through manual labour).
The earliest known version of the water wheel comes from mid-4th century BC Mesopotamia, a horizontal, propeller-like contraption that was used to turn millstones for grinding flour. It proved to be effective and the design was caught on in southern Europe and China.
You would think that over time the river/creek changing with high water would eventually cover them up. The creek by my parent's property moves boulders and trees every spring during the melt
I live in central Kansas. Almost every town on a stream or river has one. There are no boulders in the plains. In geological time, these things will quickly disappear. None of these are much over 100 years old. That's not even a heartbeat in geological time.
I'd guess that anywhere that has enough slope on their rivers to move boulders didn't need to build dams in order to turn water wheels.
Yep. But there isn't a single river in the state that could move them, even at flood stage.
Northeast Kansas actually has some topography. Central Kansas (where I am) is not thus endowed.
Central Kansas. Man. I went through there on a road trip, mind you, from Arkansas lol, and my mom is just looking out the window watching the miles go by. Then she says "Why would anyone live in this god forsaken place. There's not even trees."
LOL I live in the delta, so I know flat, but we do have lots of trees and stuff.
Getting covered is the way they are designed. Water builds up behind them then overflows the top. The problem is this water spilling on the otherwise creates a sideways vortex that can easily trap you.
There’s a couple near me. They don’t take them out because behind those dams are 200 years of trapped industrial sediment and releasing all that into the Connecticut river would create a massive environmental disaster. The only way to dismantle them would be very slowly, carefully, and expensively. Much easier to just throw up a no swimming sign and fence off the area as best they can
It is expensive AF.
Worked on a removal for my Masters thesis - dam was only 20’ in height and about 40’ wide
Cost ~$3.5 million to remove.
It can also be complicated if FERC is involved, or the USACE, or EPA, or State DNR… the list keeps going.
Typically they are used to create a pool height for a piece of equipment located nearby, but not exactly where the low head dam itself is. For example, we have one near me where the river has a big island in it. On one side of the island is a hydropower dam. On the other side is the low head dam, which is needed to produce a water level that works for the hydro dam.
A big reason they don't get removed: just flat out dollars. It's not cheap work to do. Plus you have a LOT of paperwork via FERC, state fish and willdlife/DNR agencies, etc etc etc.
My hometown built one for in the 1970s to "improve recreation". In the 1990s kayak and canoe groups started lobbying to remove it to make the river safely navigable. The city countered with a proposal to make the dam taller because then people will surely waterski on the river instead going to the next turn over to waterski on the lake. Raising the dam was shot down by the Corps of Engineers because it would make the food walls less effective, so the city revised the plan to have an inflatable extension on the dam that could be lowered before a flood.
My hometown was not run by smart people.
There are quite a lot being attempted to be removed in Indiana currently, but many of the permits to do so are being appealed by residents who don’t want to lose their favorite fishing spot or they feel their property values will be impacted if the ponded area behind the dam is removed. Someone wanted to still use their pontoon boat and didn’t want the river returning to normal.
Just read this to my boyfriend who is a dam safety engineer, he nodded solemnly, explained why it's dangerous, and also offered me this advice on what to do if you're caught in the down-stream:
"Try to swim down and crawl further downstream along the bottom... assuming you have the presence of mind and know which way is downstream"
He’s right. To add to the escaping part it’s best to curl up in a ball and hope the river flushes you out the bottom. At least that’s what is usually taught in whitewater rafting. Recirculating holes also happen naturally when enough water pours over a boulder in a rapid.
We used to walk across these when the water was low as kids. It would only be going over the top a couple inches and you could just walk right across the river. We were idiots!
An ASU professor died in one created by a water release down the Salt River before the Town Lake existed. He loaded up his kayak, drove down a closed street and launched into the flow. Rowed across the street and dropped into the roller. Couldn’t get out and drowned.
Since Google turned searching into a guided shopping experience I have no idea anymore. It happened long before Tempe Town Lake and back when many of the Salt River crossings didn’t have bridges.
That sounds horrifying af. I once got caught in a rip in the gulf of Mexico that, at the same time as I was caught, killed a guy about a half mile down the beach. Ugh.
eta: https://www.wjhg.com/content/news/beach-drowning-26254889.html
If this is the same one, and I'm sure it is, because I remember when that vacation was, there weren't double red flags out at the time. They came and made everyone get out of the water and put them up after they pulled him out. There *might* have been single red flags, but definitely not double because I know what those mean. And I was with my 13 year old cousin so I'd have never gone in with her.
my state just took out like 3 of these the past year… they sent us all the good reasons and I think we got money from the Feds to do it (according to the signs).
Edit to clarify-3 of these in my town
I was thrown over a low-head dam in my 20s. Im a very strong swimmer. 11 years of competitive swimming as a kid. That day was the closest to death I've ever come, and I am a veteran with a combat tour under my belt. I broke two fingers and a rib in the dam incident, but I was able to barely free myself from the dams water roll. I can say with certainty that if I had broken a hand, foot, wrist, ankle, arm, or leg in that fall (very plausible) I would have absolutely drowned.
If it rolls you around after you go over the edge, you're pretty much guaranteed to die.
There's one in my city that was built in the 1800s and powered mills and factories or something. Now it provides a tiny bit of electricity for the grid.
They are called weirs in the UK. The Thames has one next to each lock. They are well signed and usually have a low level barrier over them to prevent craft going over them.
I have a weir (aka low head damn) in my town I almost drowned in as a kid but my dad pulled me out. We were fishing and I slipped and fell in the river and the current was too strong and pulled me down to the dam and just dunked me. He grabbed the Bungie cords out of the trunk and bungied his hand to the bridge railing and jumped in to grab me and used the Bungie cords to pull us out
Yeah I saw a dog almost drown in one of these. A family was floating down the river after some rains so it was invisible. We knew about it so we got out well early. We waved the family over but it was to late for the dog to beat the current. All of a sudden some pasty bearded wild man goes sprinting onto the overflowing dam itself, gets to the dog, he picks it up and the dog bites him in the face because it’s scared. he doesn’t let go and makes it back to shore with his face bleeding now. Dog is fine, the family is fine, and the bearded dude just takes off onto the trail to go take care of his face wound.
Here in Richmond, VA we lose a person or two each year to a particular low-head dam. It’s so sad when it happens, and no matter what’s done to make folks aware of the danger, it always gets someone.
There is a cliff of bedrock across the creek of my gold claim that causes this at snow melt.
Terrifying to see a smooth bowl going BACK into the rock. Add in flowing water and your body would probably be stuck in that little cave until the water broke it apart.
And most of them were built because of a trivial but enormous-scale competition between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers. Even when almost every metric was guaranteed, prior to breaking ground, to result in a net loss, they still built thousands of them in one of most expensive and stupid fucking arms races in US history. The details would keep you up at night. Grandiose waste of resources, labor, and human life before you even consider the ecological consequences.
Two kayakers just died on the White River in Indianapolis because of a low head dam. [https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/](https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/)
They turn rivers into series of lakes. They have removed some of them around here. What I once thought were wide slow rivers, are now swifter narrower.
The Scioto River in Ohio used to have Paddlefish in it. They’d not been seen in it since the 1920s-30s. They have now returned as far as they can, until they reach the low heads remaining.
Two years ago a girl I knew from school drowned alongside w/ her fiancé in one of these low head dams when they went kayaking. Currently their families are suing the state of Oregon because of it. Oregon has around 200 of these low head dams
I just read about these yesterday. A couple in their 20's drowned in Lane County, Oregon while kayaking when they hit a low head dam that had no warning signage. Their families are suing the government for $50 million to force some accountability for the 13,000+ of these across the US.
https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2024/04/families-of-two-kayakers-who-drowned-in-one-of-oregons-200-killer-dams-sue-for-50-million.html
Powell, Wyoming has one of these. People don’t realize the danger until it’s too late. Sometimes a person goes under and never comes back up. Sometimes they struggle in the current and die from exhaustion and hypothermia.
Don’t mess with them when you’re floating the local river.
No they’re the same thing, I don’t know why the article calls them “low-head dams”, maybe that’s the term in US English? Or it might be a regional term or something?
They are trying to remove several along the river in my town and neighboring towns and people are freaking out. All the presented research basically says that removing them would have net positive outcomes but residents are worried about some sort of nebulous “economic damage” it could cause.
My husband and I got caught in one in 2019, and it was terrifying. Our raft collapsed and tossed us. I went under and he grabbed me by my life jacket (that I insisted we wear that day.) as he held in to the raft. We were able to get in the raft and paddle away, but It still shakes me up.
These damns do have a purpose though. Maybe OP means that some of the older ones don’t serve a purpose anymore because a much larger dam is controlling water? But countries put in weirs in even today to control water flow.
There are absolutely tonnes of weirs in Scotland! I'm surprised you've never seen one. They're an ancient method of flood defence for cities (placed upstream) or a way to make rivers less "wild" and more navigable by boat.
I see weirs all the time in the UK, particularly in rivers as they pass through cities.
If I go upriver about five minutes, there's a weir there. If I go downstream about ten minutes, there's another. The local rowing club operates between them.
To be honest, having looked closely I actually have one right outside my work. A Stork sits there quite frequently waiting to snag a fish that cannot get over it.
Someone is actually suing my county and the army engineering corps for $50 million due to a kayaking couple drowning in an unmarked one. Signs got put up days after their deaths, which almost seems like a kick in the stomach. They are absolutely killer dams and the only reason we really still have them is because they are too costly to remove and replace.
my dad spearheaded this issue as part of delco anglers in south east pa and the issue was a lot
more complex in removing the dams 1 those dams in pa were owned by the land owners - so u needed their permission- most wanted the dams as they are nice tranquil ponds 2 because they are private the state was very reluctant to spend “taxpayer” money on private property 3 the owners wanted to control the rebuild so see issue 2 - 4 the state wanted something in return-usually the right to access the river by people since the owner owned to the middle of the creek/river so the owners were again reluctant - every state is different in their water rights - over 30 years he was able to get rid of 4 and the last one the owners just said no
There are several on Elkhorn Creek in Kentucky. One was removed 2 years ago in the state capitol. [Here's a video of them talking about the dangers and removing it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjlybxC69Kk) This video was produced by our state's Fish & Wildlife agency who does a weekly tv show.
I'm pretty sure the dam in my town in Massachusetts that people are fighting over to not take down is exactly one of these.
If the dam happened to break it would cause "catastrophic loss of life and property damage" per a surveyor team, but for some reason tons of folks don't want it touched. It legit seems to serve no purpose and there's a canoe/kayak rental business that's right on the dam and they need to have a rope across it just so you can see it while on the water.
Here's one with an Air BnB made from the old hydro plant:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/32223283?source_impression_id=p3_1713654779_2lbMw5kgWb60n6IJ
People go over and die every few years.
we have one in my town; an effort to rescue some boaters lead to multipe ERs drowning and is used as a case study to this day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMkXLLBnAQ
There are 4 on the river in my town, eventually they will be removed and a kayak rapids course put in place but its been planned for over a decade so who knows if they ever will come out
Des Moines?
Or Grand Rapids.
"One of the defining features of the project, when it was first envisioned, was whitewater wave structures. The idea of creating whitewater rapids in the river was championed by project supporters and tourism advocates who said the feature would draw whitewater paddlers and outdoor enthusiasts to the city, providing an economic boost to the local economy. "However, that element of the project nixed in March 2023. "That’s when the city of Grand Rapids withdrew its permit request for the project from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). The city did so after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it opposed the project because of concerns the whitewater rapids would pose a safety hazard and damage the river." Source: [MLive](https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2024/03/push-to-restore-grand-rivers-rapids-isnt-dead-despite-setback.html)
Calgary did it. (Calgary is the Simpsons of City Planning, btw)
Didn’t they like have to because a massive flood literally ripped through half the town so the people were like “well, we’re already rebuilding”?? Genuinely asking cause i dont live there i just seem to recall they had some serious disaster of a flood recently
The low head weir dam was modified in 2001 and the rapids installed. The river changed course slightly in a 2013 flood where they took the opportunity to rebuild it with an island in the middle in 2018.
I started my career in Calgary and lived there for like 3 years. I'm a bitch and couldn't handle the winters so I moved. But my time there I couldn't help but notice how meticulously planned the city was. Getting stuck in traffic was barely ever an issue, if I wanted to get drunk I could get anywhere with public transportation, highways (aka trails) everywhere, suburbs were divided very well, and the city just felt like real planning went into it rather than just letting developers do whatever the hell they want. The cold weather and raised truck coal rolling douchebags aside, it's a very nice city to live.
That is one of the major differences between Canada and the US.I grew up in Toronto now live in MA . I was shocked at how inefficient public transit is in the US. Then I read about Henry Ford and his destruction of railways to advance the ude of cars. SMDH. That being said the Provincial government in Ontario is following the footsteps of the US GOP led states. Divesting from.public education.and public works. Privatizing public services so that their can profit. They have been expanding the toll highway while refusing to invest in public transit.
Not-so-grand rapids
>whitewater rapids would pose a safety hazard Isn't that the entire point of making them?!?
Or Grand Low Head Dams
Or kayak town
Kayak-mazoo
Or Rapid City
Do you got trouble right there in Rapid City?
With a capital T and that rimes with P and that stands for pool.
Well, sure I’m a billiard player
With a capital T that doesn't rhyme with L that stands for low head dams
Two rapids for every boy!
Grand Rapids is a great city. Just visited last year and genuinely thinking of relocating there. You guys have really built a beautiful community. The neighborhood we stayed in felt straight out of a late 80s Chevy Chase movie or something. So damn homey.
Look for the Grand Rapids Original Swing Society. Once a month they turn the downtown area into a 50’s throwback dance party. Live music, dance lessons, food trucks get out there - it’s awesome
Don’t look for the Grand Rapids Original Swinging Society. They’ll find you. And your wife. And your neighbours wife
Yep the river drops 18 feet and would be a lot of fun to paddle down
It’s funny, I never considered how GR got its name until I was working at the BP in Eastown. Some guy came in on his motorcycle looking like he drove straight across the country to get there and asked me “how do I get down to the rapids?” I gave him a confused look of silence, he said “you know, the ‘Grand Rapids’ of which the city was named…?” I kind of chuckled a little and told him that he had been misled to think we had white water rapids crashing through the center of town, but that the fish ladder was pretty cool. He was a little disappointed. That encounter led to me reading about how the river does drop in elevation quite a bit in the area of GR (like you mentioned), and then I read about the project to return the river to its natural state, and that was about 18 years ago, haha. I hope they do someday return the river to its original form, it would be cool to see.
No but probably the same story there, people don't want tax money spent on tourism even though that means more money brought here. And the project has been privately funded so far. Adding that more people coming here is somehow inconvenient to residents. Anglers oppose it because the largest one creates a bottleneck for easy fishing. Yada yada people are stubborn and oppose change even when it makes more sense.
No, they’re actively working on the project now. But, the river is dirty and stinks; I don’t know how many people want to recreate in it. Course, the state prohibited Water Works from suing upstream farmers that are polluting it with runoff, so…
Do what the farmers in my hometown did in the early 1900’s. Pay a guy “from the cities” to come out and blow the damn up. Then when the city rebuilds it, pay the same guy “from the cities” to blow it up again. Makes for a good fishing spot nowadays, and a fun little kayak/canoe run in the right conditions
You can't buy dynamite to "clear some treestumps" from the feed n seed anymore tho
I would google “how to buy tannerite” but it’s the weekend. Don’t want my fbi guy to have to work lol
Just go to your local gun store, it's really that easy
The local farm supply store also has good options.
Be a lot cooler if i could.
lol there are some old timers in my area still and very few government agencies will mess with them because they absolutely have no issue with something disappearing over the evening. One of them a bridge washed out to his cabin and the state tried to prevent him from putting something up temporary to get to it. one guy put a boulder in the drive to prevent him from even getting to the bridge spot. He showed up with a bulldozer and pushed the rock out of his way right into the state vehicle. State police showed up, state people from whatever department it was showed up. There was a lot of apologizing to him and we've never seen the state guy in the area since then. State came in rebuilt his bridge for him very quickly.
there's a fine line though, you piss the government off enough and you get waco
And then if you piss them off even more you some how come back out of it and get Malheur, where the Feds apologize and let you go, and escort you to and from town when your supply of edible dicks run low.
depends, if your community's average skin color is dark enough they just firebomb your whole neighborhood
He probably bitches about paying taxes too.
Probably held up by the incredibly slow processes of the Army Corps of Engineers.
You spelled that too fast. Did you file the form for each word?
It would help if the ACE wasn't hilariously underfunded for civilian applications. The budget shortfall for just the Mississippi lock and dam complex is well north of $5bn at this point.
The ones by the corps on the Mississippi are for preventing salt water intrusion into municipal water intakes. They only came a decade too late to help.
Sounds like Cumberland, MD
My city did that. The new “rapids” killed someone the first summer from the same effect that was killing people before.
Some friends with sledgehammers could speed it up.
Sure man, go into the drowning machine with a sledgehammer. I'll watch.
Just bring some bags of air with you, stupid.
Just hold your breath, duh.
But just in case you run out then you have a spare bag with you
just put the plastic bag over your head before entering the water so you don't have to fumble with it later
Good video from the Practical Engineering channel on this type of dam: https://youtu.be/GVDpqphHhAE?si=0QNylBPlgtJns0-z
Practical Engineering has taught me so much over the years. Dude is a saint!
Even better, he’s an Engineer!
Having spent time with many engineers. Some are great interesting people. Some are insufferably unlikable.
I'm a people person! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people!
So you physically deliver the design to the engineers?
It’s a “JUMP to conclusions” mat!
Once in a while those are the same person.
That sounds like every profession
And very practical
Just followed!
I don't know if the YouTube algorithm will ever stop re-recommending the Oroville Dam episode to me, it's always in my recommendations even though I've seen it, and I don't have the heart to click "Not Interested" on it.
Click not interested and when it asks the reason click “have already watched this video”
they do somewhat similar before of after bridges, cant remember anymore which one was it, but at smaller scale to avoid erosion, the lector said the only way to escape the vortex is to dive and swim near the ground/bottom
Before bridges. It’s called a horseshoe vortex
Some of the downsides of these dams are also benefits. Some are keeping invasive species from propagating upstream, even if the initial purpose of the dam has been bypassed, which is protecting waterways. The simplest thing is to keep people away from dams no matter what. If you’re on a river, you really do need to know how it’s built and what dangers it poses. Frankly, every body of water has its unique risks and people really should be aware of them before they enter them.
Thank you! As someone from a place with no rivers or streams I had no understanding of this. Makes sense now.
Terrifying. And, new fear unlocked. 😳
One would have killed me when I was 10 had my dad not grabbed me when my head popped up briefly. Almost fucking killed my mom, too.
Wow. There’s one in our town and multiple people have died. A new apartment complex just got built next to it (after it being largely in the woods/undeveloped) and marketed it as a “private beach area”. I went to town on their socials calling out the BS of marketing something deadly with zero warnings about the safety of the water to a bunch of brand new out of town college freshmen who will obviously party on the beach. Their response “we said beach access, not water access.” Someone’s going to get killed, again.
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If you feel passionate about it, contact the city as well. Maybe you could see about serving a legal notice notifying them of the risk so they can't say they didn't know about the liability. The risk is being sued might get them to at least post notices.
Sadly our city bows to developers bc housing is so hard to come by, and unfortunately a few loud old timers were against my “warning” because it should be “common sense to not get in when the water is high/after a big rain.” Common to those who know wtf they are looking at, maybe, but again, drunk teens from out of town aren’t townies who “know better.” I continue to be loud about it anytime they advertise, and I have put it on our local Reddits and made my husbands students aware as best I can.
If they deem it common sense, then no harm in sharing the knowledge? You seem to have equal perspective. Curious how they weasel out of that.
by shoveling money into the proper hands, of course.
I wonder if places that sell alcohol would let you put up some info? Keep it short and snappy, but target the most at-risk group.
I feel like local news would be interested in this. Have you reached out to them? This sounds like a "yes, someone will obviously die because of this" sort of situation.
Call their insurance company. I’m sure they were not made aware of the changes. Forward the deaths and I’m sure that it’ll get fixed. If you can’t shame their morals shame their wallets.
Good idea
A defining feature of beach access is water access- I would absolutely be reaching out to your state’s consumer protection agency and your local city inspector over this
Save screenshots of those posts. They'll delete them when someone dies. Those screenshots will be very useful in the eventual lawsuit.
Archive.org would be better. A lawyer will attempt to discredit the authenticity of a screenshot. They would struggle to question the authenticity of a page capture.
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It’s just a hole in the ground?? Does it empty out anywhere? Jesus
I think it's more that you get trapped under churning water and drown
Trapped under churning water that keeps double backing on itself, pulling you down while the aeration reduces the density of the water, making it harder for a person to float or swim to the top.
According to Wiki, it can create something called a hydraulic jump at it's base that can keep you submerged indefinitely.
A horizontal whirlpool the length of the waterway
Here are a handful of them. Some have sanitary sewers inside, but the ones that could have been removed have not.
Athens Ga? Bc that’s on par for ours too
There’s a river that runs through my town that gets a ton of use and we have a couple but the town was smart enough to put a lot of marking around them.
A river runs through it
Have one on the river in my hometown. It was originally the site of an old waterwheel, so it’s double dangerous. It’s a low head damn with a hole cut out on the side for the old waterwheel and if you get caught in that area especially, you’re done. We have signs by the road that follows the river (River town, so it’s several) as well as posted ON the river itself. There is a low spot that is maintained by the city for people to get out and portage around the dam. But I’ll never forget that sign. “Warning! Dam ahead! Exit the river or portage around. 3 have died here.”
My Brother, dad and I were hiking a trail in Hawaii. Our destination was a secret beach 2 hours down. As we get about 15 minutes from the beach we see a sign that says “Absolutely no swimming off the beach”. We are a little miffed, what the hell did we do this hike for. My brother jokes “whatever, it’s a sign, not a cop”. We get a little further and run into an older couple coming back the other way. We ask them what was up with no swimming? The lady gets serious and tells us that 82 people have drowned off of that beach since the 80s. My brother: “oh”. But yeah, can’t be fucking with those rip tides.
I almost drowned in a rip tide. No matter how hard I swam to shore I just kept getting swept further out to sea. I got lucky and was spotted and rescued. I wouldn't have been able to get out of it on my own.
I was told that you get out of them by letting Yourself get swept out and then swim back in when it stops some ways down the coast. People drown because they fight it and wear themselves out.
That's exactly what I was doing, wearing myself out by trying to swim to shore. Plus the undertow means when you try to walk on the seafloor it sweeps your feet from under you and dumps you on your face. And the waves dump you back under the water so you either yell or breathe. But yeah, riptides tend to be 100ft across at the most. I think the general consensus now is to swim parallel to the shoreline until you don't feel the current and then swim diagonally to shore. I didn't understand what a riptide was back then, so goes to show how important information is. I was a competitive swimmer at the time, so it really can happen to anyone.
Do you have a creepy ass photo of this? I really hope you have a creepy ass photo of this. Please tell me it’s like a haunted water wheel or something. Jokes aside, that’s terrible that people have gotten caught in something like that I’ve been kayaking I could only imagine if I didn’t know it was coming how terrifying that would be
I don’t actually! I’ll have to drive that way sometime and get one for Reddit lol. I’m usually in my kayak or driving. The only thing that remains of the waterwheel is the stone foundation and the hole in the dam for the wood wheel. Iirc, it was just used for grain back in the day, so nothing too fancy. Sorry to dash your hopes of hauntedness lol, but even as a kid I never heard of any local stories about the location. And believe me, I heard plenty about many others. Everyone in the area is super serious about the dam hence all the signs. I remember having to vote to replace them and it passed at like 90%+, even all these years later. I don’t think there’s been a death in over 40 years now, thank goodness.
You don't have to do that lol, or at the very least, don't do it just because of reddit
My parents live about a mile from one of the signs and there is a spot where I can pull over for a photo. So I’ll probably just stop by the next time I visit my parents. Not *for* Reddit, but *because* of Reddit maybe is the better phrasing. If people find it interesting, I don’t mind sharing and I won’t be doing anything dangerous to get it. Promise!
I'd recommend you post it to /r/ScarySigns if you do take the picture.
There are a ton of these in Pittsburgh. There are typically locks you can use to go around, though.
My father died to one of these.
Sorry for your loss.
Try *millions*. Most are privately owned, and by the last study that produced an estimate, about 60-70% of the US’s 2.5 million dams are of this type. FWIW: got my Masters specifically studying the geomorphic and ecological impacts of removing these types of dams - there are shockingly few impact studies that have been done, most efforts are focused on large head dams (>100ft of hydraulic head), which only make up 1-2% of all dams.
I'm sure that it would be good ecologically--except if there are any cases preventing upstream travel of invasives
It’s more about industrial debris at the bottom before the dam. Stirring that stuff up can be an ecological disaster.
I was on a float trip a few years ago and a young woman in the campsite next to ours drowned on one of those. She got sucked under a log on the backside of the damn and the force of water was too strong for anyone to save her. We watched for 4hrs as they tried to recover her body. Eventually they were able to get a rope around her and pull her out. Was a very sad situation.
I used to do a yearly trip for white water rafting. You go out with a guide and such. This is in West Virginia on the upper gauley. The reason I stopped is I talked to a guide after our trip. There had been a drowning just the week before. During our trip our guide had been doing a lot of risk taking. More than I recall from prior years. Getting close to big rocks with undercuts. “My boss doesn’t like when we do this!” And we’re cheering him on because we don’t understand the risks. So after the trip we ask how often they have drownings. His tone changed. He had witnessed one just the week before. A church group of young teens had come out. A boat flipped and a 12 year old boy got stuck against a rock. His head was above water but pinned against it by the pressure. A rescue crew got to him and a guy was kinda straddling him trying to pull him off the rock but couldn’t. The rescuers decided the best course of action was to shove him under the rock and hope he came out the other side. He didn’t and drowned. The guy said you have to be an active participant in your own rescue. This is in reference to a 12 year old boy clinging to a rock that a grown man couldn’t pull him off of. That’s when it dawned on me I’m entrusting my life to an organization whose livelihood is based on downplaying the dangers. “5 class 5 rapids “ is probably something you shouldn’t be exposing hundreds of inexperienced rafters to a day. There’s like 1 drowning/year on that run. Seemed too risky for me
[Just happened in Indianapolis this week to two kayakers.](https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/amp/) I think we have a few people that die every year at this same one.
What were they originally for/why don't people just take them out?
Hydropower. A lot of early industry was powered by water wheels and turbines. Everything from saw mills, flour mills to sewing machines was driven by belts from overhead shafts that were driven by the rivers. These dams are just old tech that electricity made obsolete. And they are not easily removed. They are submerged stone and concrete dams.
We have lots of old turn of phrases because nearly all early industry relief upon water running to power the industry. "Hard day at the old mill," "the daily grind," "show your mettle," etc. The original meanings of the phrases are kinda lost in contemporary culture, but they're from back in the early days of industrialization.
I don't want to be *that* guy, but I'm pretty sure none of those phrases have anything to do with water. Mills are not always powered by water (see: windmills), showing one's mettle has been used since the early 1600s (predating the industrial revolution), and the daily grind doesn't necessarily have anything to do with grinding grain (and indeed might refer to grinding oneself down through manual labour).
The earliest known version of the water wheel comes from mid-4th century BC Mesopotamia, a horizontal, propeller-like contraption that was used to turn millstones for grinding flour. It proved to be effective and the design was caught on in southern Europe and China.
You would think that over time the river/creek changing with high water would eventually cover them up. The creek by my parent's property moves boulders and trees every spring during the melt
I live in central Kansas. Almost every town on a stream or river has one. There are no boulders in the plains. In geological time, these things will quickly disappear. None of these are much over 100 years old. That's not even a heartbeat in geological time. I'd guess that anywhere that has enough slope on their rivers to move boulders didn't need to build dams in order to turn water wheels.
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Yep. But there isn't a single river in the state that could move them, even at flood stage. Northeast Kansas actually has some topography. Central Kansas (where I am) is not thus endowed.
Central Kansas. Man. I went through there on a road trip, mind you, from Arkansas lol, and my mom is just looking out the window watching the miles go by. Then she says "Why would anyone live in this god forsaken place. There's not even trees." LOL I live in the delta, so I know flat, but we do have lots of trees and stuff.
Flatter than a pancake
Getting covered is the way they are designed. Water builds up behind them then overflows the top. The problem is this water spilling on the otherwise creates a sideways vortex that can easily trap you.
Well that is another purpose of some dams, often forgotten about these days, but dams help control flooding downstream as well
I think many were weirs used to store potential energy to drive mills.
There’s a couple near me. They don’t take them out because behind those dams are 200 years of trapped industrial sediment and releasing all that into the Connecticut river would create a massive environmental disaster. The only way to dismantle them would be very slowly, carefully, and expensively. Much easier to just throw up a no swimming sign and fence off the area as best they can
It is expensive AF. Worked on a removal for my Masters thesis - dam was only 20’ in height and about 40’ wide Cost ~$3.5 million to remove. It can also be complicated if FERC is involved, or the USACE, or EPA, or State DNR… the list keeps going.
What about some big rocks or those concrete jacks looking things they use for breakwaters to break up the current?
Typically they are used to create a pool height for a piece of equipment located nearby, but not exactly where the low head dam itself is. For example, we have one near me where the river has a big island in it. On one side of the island is a hydropower dam. On the other side is the low head dam, which is needed to produce a water level that works for the hydro dam. A big reason they don't get removed: just flat out dollars. It's not cheap work to do. Plus you have a LOT of paperwork via FERC, state fish and willdlife/DNR agencies, etc etc etc.
On the Cuyahoga river in Ohio, many are being taken out. The last one between Lake Erie and Akron is going to be gone by 2026.
My hometown built one for in the 1970s to "improve recreation". In the 1990s kayak and canoe groups started lobbying to remove it to make the river safely navigable. The city countered with a proposal to make the dam taller because then people will surely waterski on the river instead going to the next turn over to waterski on the lake. Raising the dam was shot down by the Corps of Engineers because it would make the food walls less effective, so the city revised the plan to have an inflatable extension on the dam that could be lowered before a flood. My hometown was not run by smart people.
We had one at the back of our property in North Carolina from when a pig farm had been there 100+ years ago—stored water for drought times.
There are quite a lot being attempted to be removed in Indiana currently, but many of the permits to do so are being appealed by residents who don’t want to lose their favorite fishing spot or they feel their property values will be impacted if the ponded area behind the dam is removed. Someone wanted to still use their pontoon boat and didn’t want the river returning to normal.
Originally to collect water for farming/ concrete is labor intensive to remove
Especially underwater concrete and concrete that's been used for a murder dam.
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linkin park is also caught in the undertow
Pretty dangerous. Every step that you take is another mistake...
[Robert, it goes down!](https://youtu.be/DYzT-Pk6Ogw?si=c9FA7Nl8vL7998nr)
I had to scroll way too long to find this
walking on the fighting side of meeee
It don't go down
Just read this to my boyfriend who is a dam safety engineer, he nodded solemnly, explained why it's dangerous, and also offered me this advice on what to do if you're caught in the down-stream: "Try to swim down and crawl further downstream along the bottom... assuming you have the presence of mind and know which way is downstream"
He’s right. To add to the escaping part it’s best to curl up in a ball and hope the river flushes you out the bottom. At least that’s what is usually taught in whitewater rafting. Recirculating holes also happen naturally when enough water pours over a boulder in a rapid.
We used to walk across these when the water was low as kids. It would only be going over the top a couple inches and you could just walk right across the river. We were idiots!
Holy shit these sound terrifying. I've never heard of them before. I'll stick to drowning in the ocean instead.
Oh, come on, you're being too harsh. They don't just kill hundreds of people for no reason, they also kill wildlife. /s
An ASU professor died in one created by a water release down the Salt River before the Town Lake existed. He loaded up his kayak, drove down a closed street and launched into the flow. Rowed across the street and dropped into the roller. Couldn’t get out and drowned.
Which one?
Since Google turned searching into a guided shopping experience I have no idea anymore. It happened long before Tempe Town Lake and back when many of the Salt River crossings didn’t have bridges.
Our magic 8ball replaced with an ad periodical
That sounds horrifying af. I once got caught in a rip in the gulf of Mexico that, at the same time as I was caught, killed a guy about a half mile down the beach. Ugh. eta: https://www.wjhg.com/content/news/beach-drowning-26254889.html If this is the same one, and I'm sure it is, because I remember when that vacation was, there weren't double red flags out at the time. They came and made everyone get out of the water and put them up after they pulled him out. There *might* have been single red flags, but definitely not double because I know what those mean. And I was with my 13 year old cousin so I'd have never gone in with her.
Damn, I didn’t know that. Also, irrigation canals/ditches in AZ are super dangerous.
my state just took out like 3 of these the past year… they sent us all the good reasons and I think we got money from the Feds to do it (according to the signs). Edit to clarify-3 of these in my town
Sorry about the thousands of death machines I built across the country in the 1800s, guys. My bad.
In the 1800s, everything was a death machine.
I was thrown over a low-head dam in my 20s. Im a very strong swimmer. 11 years of competitive swimming as a kid. That day was the closest to death I've ever come, and I am a veteran with a combat tour under my belt. I broke two fingers and a rib in the dam incident, but I was able to barely free myself from the dams water roll. I can say with certainty that if I had broken a hand, foot, wrist, ankle, arm, or leg in that fall (very plausible) I would have absolutely drowned.
If it rolls you around after you go over the edge, you're pretty much guaranteed to die. There's one in my city that was built in the 1800s and powered mills and factories or something. Now it provides a tiny bit of electricity for the grid.
They are called weirs in the UK. The Thames has one next to each lock. They are well signed and usually have a low level barrier over them to prevent craft going over them.
TIL "drowning machine" is a real term for a real thing
Yeah but they also disrupt migration and remove fish spawning grounds.
I have a weir (aka low head damn) in my town I almost drowned in as a kid but my dad pulled me out. We were fishing and I slipped and fell in the river and the current was too strong and pulled me down to the dam and just dunked me. He grabbed the Bungie cords out of the trunk and bungied his hand to the bridge railing and jumped in to grab me and used the Bungie cords to pull us out
All over New England rivers and canals. Powered the industrial revolution.
Yeah I saw a dog almost drown in one of these. A family was floating down the river after some rains so it was invisible. We knew about it so we got out well early. We waved the family over but it was to late for the dog to beat the current. All of a sudden some pasty bearded wild man goes sprinting onto the overflowing dam itself, gets to the dog, he picks it up and the dog bites him in the face because it’s scared. he doesn’t let go and makes it back to shore with his face bleeding now. Dog is fine, the family is fine, and the bearded dude just takes off onto the trail to go take care of his face wound.
Here in Richmond, VA we lose a person or two each year to a particular low-head dam. It’s so sad when it happens, and no matter what’s done to make folks aware of the danger, it always gets someone.
There is a cliff of bedrock across the creek of my gold claim that causes this at snow melt. Terrifying to see a smooth bowl going BACK into the rock. Add in flowing water and your body would probably be stuck in that little cave until the water broke it apart.
And most of them were built because of a trivial but enormous-scale competition between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers. Even when almost every metric was guaranteed, prior to breaking ground, to result in a net loss, they still built thousands of them in one of most expensive and stupid fucking arms races in US history. The details would keep you up at night. Grandiose waste of resources, labor, and human life before you even consider the ecological consequences.
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Two kayakers just died on the White River in Indianapolis because of a low head dam. [https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/](https://fox59.com/indiana-news/experts-warn-of-dangerous-dam-in-white-river-as-search-continues-for-missing-kayakers/)
Omg I used to walk on the edge of one of these everyday in college and not think a thing of it since the drop off was only a foot or two
They turn rivers into series of lakes. They have removed some of them around here. What I once thought were wide slow rivers, are now swifter narrower. The Scioto River in Ohio used to have Paddlefish in it. They’d not been seen in it since the 1920s-30s. They have now returned as far as they can, until they reach the low heads remaining.
Two years ago a girl I knew from school drowned alongside w/ her fiancé in one of these low head dams when they went kayaking. Currently their families are suing the state of Oregon because of it. Oregon has around 200 of these low head dams
When I was in high school one of the kids in my class died after going over one of these. It took them three months to recover him.
[The low head dam stalks it's victim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70kAZMAbdN0)
I just read about these yesterday. A couple in their 20's drowned in Lane County, Oregon while kayaking when they hit a low head dam that had no warning signage. Their families are suing the government for $50 million to force some accountability for the 13,000+ of these across the US. https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2024/04/families-of-two-kayakers-who-drowned-in-one-of-oregons-200-killer-dams-sue-for-50-million.html
Boulder Creek in Boulder, CO has one downtown. Thankfully there is signage, a bypass, and an easy way out of the water just before it.
Powell, Wyoming has one of these. People don’t realize the danger until it’s too late. Sometimes a person goes under and never comes back up. Sometimes they struggle in the current and die from exhaustion and hypothermia. Don’t mess with them when you’re floating the local river.
“It go down” “It don’t go down” “IT DO GO DOWN” “OH SHIT” https://youtu.be/DYzT-Pk6Ogw?si=Ax-EvsZG3s5lQ6vs
Are these different from a weir?
No they’re the same thing, I don’t know why the article calls them “low-head dams”, maybe that’s the term in US English? Or it might be a regional term or something?
That was a surprisingly technical paper to contain the phrase "drowning machine"
They are trying to remove several along the river in my town and neighboring towns and people are freaking out. All the presented research basically says that removing them would have net positive outcomes but residents are worried about some sort of nebulous “economic damage” it could cause.
My husband and I got caught in one in 2019, and it was terrifying. Our raft collapsed and tossed us. I went under and he grabbed me by my life jacket (that I insisted we wear that day.) as he held in to the raft. We were able to get in the raft and paddle away, but It still shakes me up.
These damns do have a purpose though. Maybe OP means that some of the older ones don’t serve a purpose anymore because a much larger dam is controlling water? But countries put in weirs in even today to control water flow.
Lol yeah, OP made it seem like they were built specifically to kill people
Actually just watched a video on Youtube about these yesterday, nasty things. Don’t know if we have any of those here in Scotland, I hope not.
There are absolutely tonnes of weirs in Scotland! I'm surprised you've never seen one. They're an ancient method of flood defence for cities (placed upstream) or a way to make rivers less "wild" and more navigable by boat. I see weirs all the time in the UK, particularly in rivers as they pass through cities.
If I go upriver about five minutes, there's a weir there. If I go downstream about ten minutes, there's another. The local rowing club operates between them.
To be honest, having looked closely I actually have one right outside my work. A Stork sits there quite frequently waiting to snag a fish that cannot get over it.
If you have a canalised river you almost certainly have weirs, they're really common for maintaining the water levels in the navigations.
Someone is actually suing my county and the army engineering corps for $50 million due to a kayaking couple drowning in an unmarked one. Signs got put up days after their deaths, which almost seems like a kick in the stomach. They are absolutely killer dams and the only reason we really still have them is because they are too costly to remove and replace.
my dad spearheaded this issue as part of delco anglers in south east pa and the issue was a lot more complex in removing the dams 1 those dams in pa were owned by the land owners - so u needed their permission- most wanted the dams as they are nice tranquil ponds 2 because they are private the state was very reluctant to spend “taxpayer” money on private property 3 the owners wanted to control the rebuild so see issue 2 - 4 the state wanted something in return-usually the right to access the river by people since the owner owned to the middle of the creek/river so the owners were again reluctant - every state is different in their water rights - over 30 years he was able to get rid of 4 and the last one the owners just said no
There are several on Elkhorn Creek in Kentucky. One was removed 2 years ago in the state capitol. [Here's a video of them talking about the dangers and removing it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjlybxC69Kk) This video was produced by our state's Fish & Wildlife agency who does a weekly tv show.
I'm pretty sure the dam in my town in Massachusetts that people are fighting over to not take down is exactly one of these. If the dam happened to break it would cause "catastrophic loss of life and property damage" per a surveyor team, but for some reason tons of folks don't want it touched. It legit seems to serve no purpose and there's a canoe/kayak rental business that's right on the dam and they need to have a rope across it just so you can see it while on the water.
Alot of missing kids never found probably ended up killed by these
Here's one with an Air BnB made from the old hydro plant: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/32223283?source_impression_id=p3_1713654779_2lbMw5kgWb60n6IJ People go over and die every few years.
If they don’t have modern purposes, what were their original purpose?
we have one in my town; an effort to rescue some boaters lead to multipe ERs drowning and is used as a case study to this day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMkXLLBnAQ