The rushing 450-foot long cascade at the abandoned Daniels dam in the Patapsco River Valley has been "drydocked" recently, another sideshow in a multimillion-dollar bioengineering spectacle that will continue at least until 1994.
The dam, a popular fishing spot, was de-watered as part of the state's fish passage restoration project. Its waters have been jetting through a 4-foot sluice gate beside the new fish passage canal.
There is a 6-foot drop behind the 27-foot-high dam where the water is usually about 12 feet deep, the result of years of sediment accumulating since the mill dams were first built.
At the foot of the dam, water has worn a 6- to 12-foot-deep pool, which was pumped dry to allow structural reinforcement work to proceed. The fishway, which will include an observation window for underwater viewing, will be completed by mid-December.
"It's history repeating itself," observed Jay O'Dell, manager of the fish passage project. "We have this major move now to promote the future of shad and herring just as they were doing exactly 100 years ago."
Concern over dams and the decline of shad and herring, a staple food for colonists and natives, dates back to the 1768 law of fish passage, the first of many laws requiring fishways or regulating the proximity of grist mill dams on the river.
But the major barriers were the nine dams of the Industrial Revolution located between Elkridge and Daniels, which made the Patapsco River industries world-famous and helped to give the river its nickname, "Maryland's River of History."
Three of these remain today -- Daniels, Union and Simkins. Bloede, near the site of the old Orange Grove Flour Mill dam, made technological history when it was built in 1906, the world's first underwater hydroelectric plant. It, too, is getting a fishway. Only Simkins, which is privately owned, is actively used today.
Remnants of old fish ladders have been found at Daniels, as well as at many other local dam sites on both the Patapsco and the Patuxent rivers, some probably the result of state-funded work done in the 1890s by MacDonald's Fishway Co., Mr. O'Dell speculated. Fishways were legally required in 1874 on the Patapsco by an early Howard County law.
"They had virtually nil success because technology was so crude," he said. Today's fish canals, however, are underpinned by sophisticated research, Mr. O'Dell said.
