Thank you for your gracious comments, I appreciate it very much.

Thank you so much for your kind comments.

+nlo114 Thanks very much! The water quality is much better in the Raritan these days and the dissolved oxygen content is now more consistent than prior to the dam removals. I had come to discover that not only was this algae consuming oxygen when it was growing in the spring, but it was also removing the dissolved oxygen from the river in the fall when it was dying off, which was stressing the fish twice a year for long periods. Thanks again for your supportive comments.

we dont take drinking water from rivers

oly o Of course drinking water comes from rivers. In many places it is the only viable source. I'm not suggesting all drinking water comes from rivers, but a significant proportion does and always has.

Funny! And true too.

Well, we have removed three so far (Calco Dam, Nevius Street Dam and Robert Street Dam) and I am presently working on the evaluation of improving fish passage at the Island Farm Weir Dam at River Mile 22 (a structure that sits between the former Calco and Nevius St. dams). The Island Farm Weir dam has a fish ladder but we are thinking that we can improve passage with either a rock ramp or bypass so please stayed tuned. Thanks for your question.

And now serve as a series of impediments for fish and have claimed several lives.

Thank you; it really looks great now after nearly two years of natural recovery.

How many more dams did you clear

We removed the Calco Dam on Raritan River Mile 20.9 in July-August 2011, the Robert St Dam at RM 27.9 in July-August 2012 and the Nevius Street Dam at RM 277.0 in July 2013 - videos for the Calco and Nevius Street dams can also be found on KZfaq by Googling the names of the dams (the Nevius Street Dam video is also in two parts). Thanks!

That's music? I thought it was just noise.

That was a bunch of bullshit turn that damn out

That was amazing wasn't it. Looks like they vibrated the joints apart.

Your right, I thought it was very cool also

Thank you everyone. Those sheet piles were a very well-designed and installed arched piles with rolled, integral interlocks and it took a sheet pile extractor capable of 2,100 vibrations/minute to vibrate them loose. The 3-ton extractor was pushed down at first to initiate a break in the interlock before lifting each sheet. We pulled 298 sheets in all, and they amounted to 70 tons of steel (all of which was recycled, I am happy to say). Thanks.

Looking back at my notes, it took a total of 11 days. The first 5 days, we used a smaller extractor but we burned it out from overuse, so we replaced that one with the larger green extractor that you see in the video. Over the next 6 days, we pulled the remainder of the sheets, although I left in place the final two sheets on each side of the river because I needed them to continue to support the concrete shoreline sidewalls of the former dam. Thanks for your question!

As the extractor came close to pulling the sheet free from its interlock, I saw what looked like smoke, or dust, and some redness in the metal where the sheets joined. Did this extracting generate that much heat in the metal sheets as they were pulled? Was the vibration responsible for any heat that could have resulted from the friction involved in separating these long sheets of metal? Just curious, That sheeting must have taken a very long time to install. Such a shame, all that work creating a dam that did nothing but ruin natures river and cause danger to animals, fish and people.

Six: Dams served importance purposes when built. We would not have the country we do without them. It is nice to restore the rivers, however.

00UncommonSense00 Right, let’s remove the Hoover dam next!

Great question. The Robert Street Dam was rebuilt in 1964 to impound the river for boaters launching just upriver in Duke Island Park (that dam application had the purpose of the dam being "for recreation"), yet after there were drownings, boating was discouraged. Luckily now, it is safe to launch watercraft and paddle all the way downriver. Thanks for your question!

Thanks for your question Robert, sorry I'm late in responding. The project was paid for entirely by private funds (no taxpayer money). My client's company bought a company that bought a company that bought a company [I'm not mis-typing here, it was a series of three corporate transactions) that polluted the Raritan River back in the 1920s and 1930s. Federal and state law require responsible parties to compensate you, me and every other US citizen for that past damage. Given that the original pollution was cleaned up doesn't matter, what matters was people back then lost the use of the river. So my client and I along with NJDEP researched and agreed that dam removals (we did three of them) would be the best way to compensate the public by reopening the river to recreation, increase fishing opportunities, and enhance the ecosystem. Thanks for reaching out with your question and for your complimentary comments.

That's called a fish ladder.

Fish ladders are more a public relations stunt than an effective solution to the problems dams cause. It is often said that a properly designed fish ladder greatly benefits fish migration. In practice, no one had ever been able to properly designed a fish ladder.

and what is that exactly?

to live with other species on this planet.

I got that much.. but what are the details? this planet wasn't exactly peaceful before we arrived haha we just mastered the art of hunting and gathering. and farming animals.

Well, in this case, there were no wetlands upstream as they had been drowned by the dam, but they are now re-emerging with the lower, normal river level. I think you are raising a larger point; however, which I should answer. In those cases where wetlands did form upstream of a dam, we don't have to mitigate those because they were essentially dependent on an artificial water level and so the Land Use regulators who oversee this work are quite comfortable with allowing new wetlands to be established when river levels are returned to their natural elevation. Thanks for your question.

+Tom Hawkins, thanks for your question. Fish migration studies have shown that anadromous fish cannot overcome most partial removal flow velocities so partial dam removals are not often permitted in NJ. And on a practical basis, it takes 3-5 years to gain access to these dams through private properties, obtain all the proper (and required permits from federal and state agencies) and wait for the right river conditions (cfs) to set up so NJDEP requires us to use that one window of opportunity to execute a complete dam removal until the river is completely open and the dam is completely removed per the permit requirements. Lastly, the amount of large trees that flow down the Raritan continues to astound me, and I could easily envision a tree wedging across a partial removal and re-blocking the river. Thanks for your comment

Great question. We had over 700 tons of concrete and that all delivered to a concrete recycler, who crushed it and sold it as roadway subgrade material. So, somewhere in New Jersey, people are driving over the remnants of this dam. Thanks for your question.

@@JohnWJengo Awesome, and thank you for the video and quick response. :)

@@JohnWJengo40 yards of clean fill taken out of my yard for a swimming pool now rests under a Walgreen's drug store about a mile from my house. Contractors GLADY take clean fill and I was glad to get rid of it. When I go to that store, I chuckle as each time I am in there, I know I am walking on my backyard.

You might be thinking of the Headgates Dam, located 2 miles upstream. I have been working on the planning of that removal since 2009 and hope to accomplish the removal by 2026. Thanks.

Thanks for your question. Each dam that I've done was built for a different reason. In the case of the Robert St Dam, it was substantially re-built in 1964 for "recreational purposes," meaning that they wanted to impound the river and create a lake for boating. Ironically, the dam would turn out to be one of the biggest hazards to boating on Raritan, with documented fatalities of boaters being swept over the dam and drowning in the reverse roller at the toe of the dam. I'm happy that with the dam now gone, it's safe again to canoe/kayak this stretch of the river. Thanks

Our town in kansas has one to impound water for drinking uses. I lost to it as he try to get fishing line unstuck. If I remember right he got caught in the concrete and rebar to fight erosion. He later got kicked out. They can serve as a true good purpose but they are deadly.

They are deadly indeed; this Robert Street Dam was the scene of several drownings where boaters went over the dam and could not escape the reverse roller that formed at the downstream face of the dam. While I am very pleased with the migratory fish recovery through this reach of the river, I'm exceptionally happy that no one else will perish here as a result of this dam and its treacherous, inescapable hydraulics. Thanks for your comment.

@@JohnWJengoThe danger of these dams has long been known. I first heard the term ‘drowning machine’ in an NFPA training film in the mid-70’s. You should feel proud to remove these killers, one by one.

Luckily, there was no lead in this dam and we recovered all the concrete (700 tons) and steel (70 tons) from the river during the removal to prevent any adverse impacts to water quality. Thanks.

Let's hope then it's because we've replaced it with another power source, not because civilization has collapsed and we've reverted to savagery. Energy is the lifeblood of civilization. It's an absolute requirement.

I do get asked a lot whether these dams provided hydropower (they did not). Still, if they had, there are now in-stream turbines that can be emplaced in the fast flowing reaches of river channels that can generate electricity and these have virtually no negative impact on the environment, and thus would be the preferred option in replacing small hydropower dams. As an aside and to your question, the owner of the third dam I removed (Nevius St Dam) installed solar panels on their property, so if that dam had provided hydropower, that "lost" capacity would have been easily compensated for via solar. Thanks for your comment.

Brian, that was concrete dust primarily. Our preliminary studies of the dam structure indicated the absence of any hazardous materials, but I appreciate your comments. We analyze the impounded sediment too for such substances to ensure that we don't inadvertently release them downstream. Thanks.

Thanks for that comment; some firms do leave concrete behind and I think that looks awful so I make a point of always trying to remove every piece of concrete that I can find, which requires wading the river for weeks afterward searching for pieces. Thanks again for your thoughtful comment.

Yes, it was. I think because it failed so catastrophically in 1963 that they wanted to make sure it didn't get undermined again, thus explaining the installation of the steel sheet piles serving as cut-off walls. Thanks.