EASTON, Pa. — The demolition hammer has come to one of three historic dams set to be removed from Bushkill Creek in the Easton area this summer and next.
A collaboration among the nonprofit land trust The Wildlands Conservancy, Delaware River Basin Commission and Lafayette College is set to restore an unimpeded flow to about two miles of the creek.
The Wildlands Conservancy said it's to improve water quality and recreation and fully open the Bushkill to the Delaware River "for the first time in 100 years."
- A demolition of a Bushkill Creek dam at 300 N 3rd Street is the first of three set to take place in the Easton Area
- The demolition project seeks to reconnect the creek fully with the Delaware River by allowing species, such as freshwater mussels, to move freely upstream
- Student researchers and conservation workers anticipate water quality to improve and will be studying the impacts of the dam removal
The first dam was demolished Friday at the creek entrance behind Don Juan Mexican Grill, 300 N. Third St., Easton, on land owned by the college.
The second dam set to be removed this summer is on land owned by Simon Silk Mill, with a third dam owned by Easton set to be demolished next summer.
Relief and satisfaction
Lafayette Geology Professor Dru Germanoski said that after the delays and studies involved in the project, he felt relief and satisfaction that the first of the hazardous dams are being removed.
"They were built to power mills in the 1700s, 1800s, early 1900s," Germanoski said. "And they no longer serve that purpose.
"So they sit in the landscape, they're deteriorating, so many of them are gonna fail on their own; some have."
He said the latest rendition of the dam was completed in 1908, with the first dam on the site established in 1797 to power a grist mill nearby.
Germanoski said the pool upstream will have more oxygen, while sediment flow will be improved as the creek reaches a new equilibrium.
Importantly, he said, it will let trout and other species such as American eels to once again move upstream from the river and other parts of the tributary creek.
Normally, trout in the Delaware River would swim up tributaries to reproduce.
"So the dam serves as barriers to that," Germanoski said. "Fish certainly can move downstream, eels can move downstream, but they can't swim upstream."
"By removing the dams, what we're doing is increasing the connectivity of the stream to a more natural situation where fish can migrate upstream and reproduce."
He said the dams offered no flood protection, and overall reduced water capacity of the channel because of sediment buildup. He also said removing the dam eliminates a safety hazard for people using the stream for recreation.
An effort of more than a decade
Officials from the Delaware River Basin Commission and Wildlands Conservancy said initial natural resource damage assessment funding came following a fly ash spill from the Martins Creek power plant in 2005.
The settlement, reached in 2016, totaled $1.3 million, with $902,150 going to the Delaware River Basin Commission for dam removal projects and $50,000 going to the commission to manage mussel restoration.
Additional funding for the overall project of $2,049,200 came from the Delaware Watershed Conservation fund, and $100,000 from Northampton County's Livable Landscapes program.
Elizabeth Brown, external affairs and communications director for the Delaware River Basin Commission, said the estimated cost of the removal work on Bushkill Creek at Lafayette College was $600,000.
But with significant planning and pre-work required to move utility lines, stabilize the site and other work, the total cost likely will be significantly higher by the project's end, Brown said.
The total project budget came in over $2 million, according to Wildlands Conservancy officials.
Given the resulting damage and federal funds that impacted the local mussel population, the DEP and Delaware River Basin Commission eventually decided to use some of that money to re-establish the species and restore the creek.
Freshwater mussels remove bacteria, algae and other contaminants via filter feeding, increasing water quality.
Adult mussels are fixed species, and Germanoski said they disperse by affixing themselves as larvae to fish and eels before dropping in a suitable space.
He said the hope is that by opening the streams to fish migration, mussel migration will follow, improving water quality upstream.
The project also includes streamside plants to support the riparian buffer and runoff filtering, as well as structures to support fish habitats.
First time in 100 years
Kristie Fach, director of ecological restoration with the Wildlands Conservancy, said the project will restore about three miles of the Bushkill, reconnecting the creek with the Atlantic Ocean "for the first time in 100 years."
“As ecologists, we talk a lot about aquatic life and righting ecosystems, but the species that stands to benefit most when we do large-scale projects like this is humans,” Fach said in a news release before the event.
"This [removal] means improved water quality for communities in the Lehigh Valley and for the more 17 million people who get their drinking water from the Delaware River basin.”
She said the plan to remove the dams has been set for about 10 years, leveraging the additional funding and support from Northampton County and other partners.
"This has been such a team effort for many years," Fach said at the demolition. "So for it to all be today, we're really excited,"
Bushkill Creek begins at the foot of Blue Mountain in Bushkill Township and flows 22 miles before its confluence with the Delaware River.
It flows through agricultural and suburban areas, as well as Easton, and supports a large wild brown trout population.
The Wildlands Conservancy recently removed two other dams near the Binney & Smith Preserve and near Jacobsburg State Park.
A celebration event with project supporters and partners is planned for Lafayette College this fall.
An opportunity for study
Germanoski and others from Lafayette plan to continue studying the site for sediment and as demolition continues in coming weeks, observing sediment and bed changes, as well as the distribution of invertebrates and water quality.
He said study on the site has taken place for more than a decade, with various forms of data having been collected by scholars at the site since 2011.
"The faculty have done such an amazing job, just connecting the kids. So you have the education component, but then even just from a standpoint of being able to monitor the stream and the benefits there, that's something that we never really have the resources to do."Kristie Fach, director of ecological restoration with the Wildlands Conservancy
He said multiple research findings from the studies have been presented at conferences, with even more anticipated now both on the natural sediment variation of the creek and from the early adjustment that will be observed following the complete dam removal.
"It's actually been a little bit of a godsend that it was delayed, because we have an unusually long period of data pre-dam removal," Germanoski said. "These creeks are more dynamic naturally than people realize."
He said the interdisciplinary nature of the group will prep students for real life work alongside professionals in different fields.
Ellie Walsh, a junior geology student at Lafayette, works with a team of biology, engineering and other students in the interdisciplinary study group.
"It's been cool to kind of be able to apply what I've been learning," Walsh said. "It's cool to be able to apply it in like a real setting where like, real people are affected by it."
During the initial demolition, Walsh and other students took and documented samples of the creek water at regular intervals, with sampling to continue via an automated process during and after the demolition process.
"The faculty have done such an amazing job, just connecting the kids," Fach said. "So you have the education component, but then even just from a standpoint of being able to monitor the stream and the benefits there, that's something that we never really have the resources to do.
"Now we're going to really be able to see the science behind what the restoration benefits are.
"With dams, they're so commonplace, you see them every day, so you don't really realize all the impairments that they have on water quality and habitat or even safety."
