Option One Chosen, Kalamazoo River Dams to be Removed

Since Sep. 22 of last year, the city of Albion has been waiting for an update on what was to be done about the five dams in the Kalamazoo River.

The update? The Wightman group decided on option one of three: all five dams will be removed, but the water will be kept in all three of the river channels.

On Nov. 6, the Wightman group, accompanied by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) hosted an open house featuring maps of the current river system. Members of the community were invited to ask questions and learn more about the development of this project.

In last year’s presentation, Fish Biologist Matt Diana from the DNR said the second option involved moving more water through the north branch, and the third was to “meander the Natural Channel into Victory Park and away from the neighborhood.”

Project Manager for the Kalamazoo River dam removal and Wightman Engineer Suzannah Deneau said Wightman’s role now is to try to maintain the water so it flows equally in all the channels. The plan to remove all five dams has been in motion since 2019 Deneau said, starting with creating the designs for each option. 

Since Albion has a history of flooding, Deneau said, option one was chosen to keep the flooding under control. 

Another reason the option to keep all channels open was chosen was to make sure the community members who lived close to the mill race still had access to water, Deneau said. 

“The folks that would be on the north and east of the mill race, if we took that out, they wouldn’t have access to water anymore,” Deneau said. 

Though removing all five dams was a part of all three options, both the project heads and most of the community believed option one was the right decision, Deneau said. 

Community members have been involved throughout most of the process, Deneau said. There have been presentations here at the college and at city hall to inform the Albion residents what would be happening. 

Even though Deneau said most community members were on board with option one, some people still have concerns about the removal of all the dams. 

Charles Robison, who has been a resident of Albion for 41 years and has property on the front of the river, said his main concern is flood control. Robinson said he thinks the dams should be kept in place because the dam was built for a reason and that reason was flooding.

“What are they going to do or say if we get another flood, it comes down and wipes out everything along the river downtown?” Robison said. “We should’ve left the dam up.” 

CSE Director and Professor in the Earth and Environment department, Thomas Wilch, said removing the dam would be a “very slow” process

“They have to cut into the dam very, very slowly so they can control the amount of sediment that comes out,” Wilch said. “If you just took it out, you would have this catastrophic release of sediment.”

The process, Wilch said, might take up to three years. To get to the next design level, it will take about a year and a half. He said the project has been keeping the community in the loop with presentations at City Hall and expects an increase in both attendance and meetings in the future when the dams are close to being fully removed.

In Wilch’s geomorphology class, students like Erie, CO senior Liam McLaughlin are getting involved with the dam removal project. At CSE’s fall Green Day, he and his classmates presented an older copy of the river system to raise awareness and get input. 

Over the course of this semester, McLaughlin said he and his classmates have been doing research on the river by looking at the measurements of different parts of the river.

“We were doing river measurements, getting a velocity, measuring the actual river banks, looking at the different curves,” McLaughlin said. “Stuff like that in different spots near the dams to try to figure out how these dams, if they’re removed, will cause different things to happen around the river.”

Since the removal will take a few years, McLaughlin said he thinks the project will be incorporated into future earth and environment courses to raise awareness and further research the impacts.