Dam a ‘$6.3 million paperweight’?
SEYMOUR — When state and federal officials unveiled the $6.3 million Tingue Dam fish bypass in 2014, they heralded it as the fish maker.
These days, Kevin Zak sees the Denil Fishway more like a “$6.3 million paperweight.”
The bypass was designed to enable migratory fish to climb the nearby Kinneytown Dam fish ladder built in 1998 and swim along the 32 miles of the Naugatuck River to spawn.
But Zak, who heads the Naugatuck River Revival Group, has seen nowhere near the predicted passage of the 20,000 shad or the 30,000 river herring during his years filming fish migration in the area.
In fact, the fish ladder is mostly ignored by the fish, who seem to bypass its entrance, apparently stymied by its tortuous, twisted length. Fish ladders are most effective when they are straight and short and do not include the twists and turns of the long Kinneytown ladder, according to experts. But help may be on the way. The Naugatuck River Restoration Coalition, which includes the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, the Naugatuck River Revival Group and Save the Sound, has formed to fight for improvements to the dam and fish ladder and enlisted the help of an attorney to work with federal agents and the owners of the property to fix the problems.
Waterbury Mayor Neil O’Leary, who chairs the Naugatuck Valley of Governments, said during its Dec. 10 meeting that the Kinneytown Dam project will be “one of our highest priorities moving into the new year.”
To that end, the council plans to have its staff meet with the state’s congressional delegation as well as representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to discuss the problems and possible actions.
The coalition, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have filed paperwork with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., seeking action. FERC has opened a docket on the matter.
The hope is FERC will convince Enel Greenpower, a multi-national energy supplier based in Italy that owns the Kinneytown Dam and the two power plants it services, to comply with orders to ensure the ladder is operable, coalition members said.
“We’re all upset at how long this has been going on,” said Kat Fiedler, a staff attorney with Save the Sound. “At this point, the Fish and Wildlife Service has requested information to determine what needs to be done. Now we need to transition to taking overdue steps to fix these issues. It could become an enforcement action at a later stage, if those steps aren’t taken.”
Why isn’t it working?
Experts are divided on why the initial project appears to have failed so spectacularly.
“It is the fish ladder that requires fish to make an arduous and often deadly climb that is the problem,” said Rick Dunne, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments.
Another problem, critics said, are the two hydroelectric power plants supplied by the dam. The largest in Seymour is adjacent to the dam and produces about 1.8 megawatts of energy.
The second smaller one about a mile and a half away on Ansonia’s Fourth Street is designed to produce just under a megawatt of power but has been been inoperable since at least 2013 when it was damaged by fire.
In a letter to FERC, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claims the inoperable Ansonia power station causes the dam to spill frequently and as a result, attracts fish to the base of the dam, limiting the ladder’s effectiveness.
John Waldman, a SUNY biology professor, said deterioration of the dam — which he described as “a tired-looking cement monolith with giant horizontal cracks, numerous leaks and bent rebar sticking out of it” — also has contributed in big part to the problem.
His description, which appeared in a letter in Hearst Connecticut Media Group’s newspapers, led Aaron Budris, a senior regional planner with the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, to advise its members that a dam breach could pose additional risks to life and property along the Naugatuck River Greenway Trail, which runs through Derby, Ansonia and Seymour as well as O’Sullivan Island in Derby.
“If anything, it is the flow of water over the top of the dam that is causing other problems that contribute to the deficiency of fish passing,” Dunne said. “But make no mistake, it is the utter failure of the design and maintenance of that fish ladder that is the problem with getting fish further upstream.”
“You see this down here?” Zak said, pointing to bottom of the Kinneytown Dam waterfall, some 1.8 miles upstream from the start of the fish ladder. “I call that the killing zone.”
Waldeman’s description was more stark.
“Look closely in springtime and you will see the force of life pressing against the dam, hundreds of individual fish — even trout and salmon — frustrated in their attempts to move upriver to spawn,” Waldman wrote. “Some perish, their bodies drying in the sun. This occurs right next to a lengthy, zig-zagging engineered fish ladder intended to allow passage over the dam. It has been a failure.”
How can it be fixed?
In a Nov. 9, letter, Enel informed FERC they don’t intend to decommission the Ansonia powerhouse but were seeking funding through financial incentives like grants, tax credits or other revenue sources to repair it.
On Nov. 30, Save The Sound and the Naugatuck River Revival Group fired back with a letter of their own demanding FERC require performance-based standards for safe, timely and effective fish passage and effectiveness testing to make sure the standards are actually met.
“It is the clear record of failure to properly operate and maintain this facility by the Kinneytown Hydro Project owner, ENEL, that has exacerbated the poor design of the fish ladder and led directly to the reduction in fish passage to essentially zero today from the level it was at when constructed,” said Dunne.