Dam's end washes away a bit of history.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

BROWNSVILLE - Dozens of onlookers were expecting a dramatic, waterfall-style spill during a history-making breach of a historic dam Monday. What they saw, however, was more akin to someone pulling the plug in a giant bathtub.

For nearly two hours, heavy equipment pummeled and clawed the northern fifth of the 50-foot-wide Brownsville Dam. The 6-inch-thick bore of a huge hydraulic jackhammer stabbed at the thick wall - PUM! PUM! PUM! - like the lead of a gigantic pencil. A snaggle-toothed construction bucket followed, yanking broken concrete from rebar tentacles.

As all the dramatic activity continued near the north bank, the long-dammed Calapooia River was quietly infiltrating the structure's hollow core. It burst through a weak spot 30 feet south, spewing into the deep pool below. As it did so, the river level dropped above the dam, leaving only wet rocks to mark its former presence.

For advocates of endangered spring chinook salmon and steelhead, the event was a national milestone.

The dam removal is the first in the nation under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's new Open Rivers Initiative. The program provides funding and technical expertise for community-driven river barrier removals. In Brownsville, grants from NOAA and other agencies will cover both removal of the 150-year-old landmark and construction of a pump station to continue delivering river water to the Brownsville Canal.

With the planned breach of another dam near Shedd by 2010, fish will have the run of the entire Calapooia for the first time in more than 150 years. Between the river and dozens of tributaries, biologists say fish could regain as much as 100 miles of spawning habitat.

"We're here to celebrate a new way of solving environmental problems," said Ken Bierly, deputy director of the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, at a dam-breaching ceremony.

For many members of the Brownsville Canal Co., however, the dam is a bitter loss.

Even as Bierly and others praised the collaboration that led the group to unanimously endorse removal last year, canal company president John Holbrook said most members were "too sad" to attend the ceremony.

Bud Baumgartner, president of the Calapooia Watershed Council, said the group recognized five years ago that the Brownsville dam was "a serious barrier to fish."

The historic structure also had other problems, Baumgartner said: "It was failing. So we spent the next three years getting the support of Brownsville citizens who have very fond memories of this location."

The community's ties to it go back to 1858, when industrialists built a wooden crib dam to divert water into the Brownsville millrace, Mayor Don Ware told an audience of nearly 100.

"This dam was built before Oregon was a state, to supply water to what was to be an industrial center," he said. "At one time we had a woolen mill, a grist mill and a door and sash mill."

That dream dissipated with the era of water-powered mills, ending completely when the woolen mill burned to the ground in 1955. Still, the canal company continued to maintain the dam, rebuilt as a concrete structure after a destructive 1964 flood. Ware recalled volunteering on behalf of the city, which holds the canal group's largest water right, to help put up and remove the 5-foot-tall "flashboards" erected each spring to boost its height to 10 feet, ensuring enough water to meet members' irrigation and recreation needs throughout the summer.

"I won't miss carrying those heavy, water-logged boards, with all the slime and little worms on them," Ware said. "But I do have a sense of sadness at losing that tradition of working together. Maintaining the canal was a way of maintaining our history."

Holbrook said after the ceremony that many canal company members felt "kind of a gun held to their heads" to agree to dam removal.

Because of changing federal and state policy, grants were no longer available for repair and maintainance, he explained, and the 60-member group could not cover such costs. Nor could it afford to defend itself against a lawsuit for obstructing fish passage, he said.

Still, he praised Calapooia Watershed project manager Denise Hoffert-Hay for persuading the dam owners to support another solution.

"It takes a person like Denise who is able to work with all types of people, personalities and organizations," he said.

Dam removal costs - about $820,000 - will be covered by grants from NOAA, the state lottery-funded Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the private Bella Vista Foundation.

The funding includes 10 years worth of maintenance and electricity costs for the pump system. Farmers and ranchers worry about what will happen beyond that, Holbrook said, "because in 10 years, we're still going to need that water."

INSIDE

Outdoors: Several dams are targeted to improve fish habitat / B1