Conowingo Dam

A spontaneous night of rockfishing for a pair of best friends ended Tuesday with a Baltimore County man missing and presumed drowned, after the two were swept down the frigid, turbulent Susquehanna River in Harford County.Christopher N. Fedor, 25, of the 5600 block of Leiden Road in Cedonia disappeared after he and Victor John Minoglio, 26, of the 300 block of E. Broadway in Union Bridge capsized in their kayak south of the Conowingo Dam shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday.Susan O'Brien, a spokeswoman with the Department of Natural Resources, said the pair had anchored their 12 1/2 -foot Keowee kayak from the middle, causing it to tip over.

Heavy snowfalls in New York State, followed by this week's warm weather and rain, have sharply increased the flow of the Susquehanna River, prompting officials at Conowingo Dam to open floodgates to release the added volume of water.A portion of Route 222, between Port Deposit and the dam, was closed Friday as a precaution and will remain closed until the water subsides, but there is no threat to homes or businesses in the area, officials said."There's a pretty tremendous force of water coming down the river," said Michael Wood, spokesman for PECO Energy Co., which owns the dam.The river crested at Conowingo at 50 feet 2 inches at 9: 30 a.m. yesterday.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- On the breezy May night when Earl Ashenfelter died, his beloved Susquehanna River was throbbing with fish. There was a half-moon up in the cloudy sky, and in the river below, life was on the move in torrents.As the moon drives the tides, hormones were driving the fish to create new generations. Spawning shad were running up into Deer Creek, smallmouth bass were stirring in rocky places where the water races, and herring were spashing around among the moored boats in the Havre de Grace marinas.

It straddles two counties, a mountain of steel and concrete nearly a mile long and more than 100 feet high, blending into the Susquehanna River as it transforms the river's flow into electricity.The exterior of the Conowingo Hydroelectric Station and Dam, nearly 70 years old, is an integral part of the landscape of Harford and Cecil counties. It draws anglers and bird-watchers to its teeming reservoir and tourists to the torrent that spills below the structure.But, deep inside, the dam has a secret life of its own.From "Turbine Hall," where 11 huge turbines hum with the sound of churning water wheels, to the dank inspection tunnel below a 90-foot spillway, workers scurry behind a wall of water.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Both our children were on vacation this week, one from college and one from the eighth grade, and as a result my personal productivity went into a precipitous decline. It was great!One day, when I should have been writing a book review or fixing fences, Sarah and I tried out the new bike trail along the Susquehanna, from Deer Creek north to the Conowingo Dam and back again. It was only a few miles, and the pedaling and river-gazing didn't take us long, but what with the preliminary messing around with tire gauges, air compressors and bike racks, we killed most of the afternoon.

CONOWINGO -- It's rush hour on the Susquehanna River.American shad, eager to complete their 1,000-mile commute from the Atlantic Ocean, are swimming up the Chesapeake Bay's largest tributary in numbers that haven't been seen for 20 years or more.And for the first time in nearly 70 years, the once-abundant migratory fish can make it 56 miles up the river under their own power -- with the help of some man-made power.Utilities that own three hydroelectric dams on the Susquehanna have built elevatorlike lifts to hoist fish over the concrete walls blocking their way.Home for these tasty but bony fish is the faster-flowing shallow water north of Harrisburg, Pa., where they can lay eggs and ensure their species' survival.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- In March 1926 young Earl Hopkins, age 15, made his way to the new office the Boston engineering firm of Stone & Webster had just opened in the little village of Conowingo. The company was getting ready to build a dam, and Earl was one of its first hires. He earned $12 a week as an office boy.For residents of Harford and Cecil Counties that spring, the start of construction on the Conowingo Dam must have come as something of a relief. It had been assumed for more than 20 years that a hydroelectric plant would eventually be built in that part of the Susquehanna River's narrow valley one day, but until 1926 the project was all talk and no digging.

On a cold and gray Sunday, hundreds of people, some with their pets or video cameras, came to the Susquehanna River yesterday to marvel at the power of nature as it exploded through the open gates of Conowingo Dam.Downstream at beleaguered Port Deposit, rescuers and town officials gave an exhausted sigh of relief and cursed the mighty waters that forced evacuation of their riverfront town and carried yachts away like bathtub toys.Some also cursed the PECO Energy Co., owners of the dam, which opened 39 of 52 flood gates -- with little warning -- to release the swollen Susquehanna in their direction.

Returning to flood-ravaged Port Deposit yesterday, residents saw the power of the Susquehanna River and the devastation delivered during their weekend evacuation: cars immersed in icy water, boats smashed and homes ruined.Town officials were still assessing monetary damages yesterday, but a preliminary report by the Cecil County Red Cross listed nearly 24 single-family homes and 40 apartments that were destroyed or in need of repairs.Cindy Hott, 36, returned to the Main Street home she shares with Doug Johnson, 31, to find water up to the first floor, saturated carpets and ruined furniture.

Perry Poist glanced at the sky, then at the front of his home. A broad brown line about waist-high stretched across the vinyl siding and his front door -- a painful reminder of last weekend's flooding."

On Nov. 16, 1927, Earl Hopkins was the first to drive his car over the Conowingo Dam. U.S. 1 was realigned over the 4,648-foot-long dam, and two weeks later, the old Conowingo bridge was destroyed. The first concrete was poured Aug. 2, 1926. The dam grew section by section, until the Harford and Cecil sides reached the middle. R.G. Rincliff wrote, "To permit riverbed construction work, huge cofferdams, using nearly eight million feet of timber, were built, and over 660,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured before the project was completed."

By next spring, anglers will likely cast their lines into the Susquehanna River from a $4 million fishing wharf now under construction near Conowingo Dam. Exelon Power, the utility company that operates the Conowingo Hydroelectric Station on the river, has launched construction of an expansive walkway with wide steps leading to the beach at the base of the dam. The area has long been a favorite fishing spot, especially when the shad run in the spring....

The number of shad migrating up the Susquehanna River in Maryland has fallen by almost half over the past year, part of a worrisome decline up and down the East Coast, scientists say. The drop means that counts of American shad at Conowingo Dam have fallen by more than 90 percent over the past seven years. That is a stark reversal from the 1990s, when the construction of fish lifts at dams - and bans on shad fishing - spurred a revival of what has been called "the founding fish" because of its dominance as a food in Colonial times.

On a brisk, late-winter morning, Leocea McLanahan walked along the Susquehanna River with her three daughters, the youngest in a stroller. Caitlin, 9, found bluebells and asters emerging amid the ground cover. Five-year-old Malea peered through binoculars, looking for birds with their babies. The McLanahans come often from their home in Conowingo. "We have a guidebook, and we look for different birds and flowers along the water," said McLanahan, who home-schools her children. "We jot down notes to help us remember."

Four road bridges at Conowingo A group of investors advertised in The Baltimore American on Nov. 17, 1815, that a petition was to be presented to the General Assembly for a law to authorize the building of a bridge over the Susquehanna River. This was the first Conowingo Road Bridge and was completed, according to a letter to the American, on Oct. 2, 1820. The bridge, 1.8 miles upstream of the current site of Conowingo Dam, was washed away in a flood of March 1846. A new company was chartered in 1847 and a new bridge, which crossed the river from Glen Cove in Harford County to near the mouth of the Conowingo Creek in Cecil County, was completed in 1859.

On an outing last November, my wife, Cathy, took this picture of a bald eagle near Conowingo Dam in Harford County. We love to watch birds and other wildlife and on that particular day we were taking a bike ride on the "Greenway" trail from Susquehanna State Park to the Conowingo Dam. Aberdeen Proving Ground, where I work, supposedly has an eagle population of more than 200. From what I understand, the eagles at Conowingo are actually APG residents who...

Maryland's park system grew by 72 acres yesterday, as a power company donated a small but historic island in the Susquehanna River to an adjacent state park. Roberts Island was the farthest north that Capt. John Smith ventured as he explored the Chesapeake Bay about 400 years ago. The state plans to put the rocky, wooded chunk of uninhabited land on a tour of places that Smith visited. "The island is rich in Native American history, and will be a welcome addition to the Susquehanna State Park as well as an important landmark along the Chesapeake National Historic Water Trail," said Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Chicago-based Exelon Corp.

PORT DEPOSIT -- Dive teams searched the murky bottom of the Susquehanna River yesterday for a powerboat that broke apart and sank with its driver aboard during a race Sunday. A passenger, the man's 15-year-old son, swam to safety. Paul Henry Sohn, 49, and his son Timothy John Sohn of Grasonville on the Eastern Shore had been racing in their family's Jersey skiff, Jumpin' Jack Flash. The boat, about 20 feet long and capable of speeds of about 80 mph, apparently launched into the air after bouncing off another racer's wake, and then split in half as it hit the water, said Sgt. Ken Turner of the Maryland Natural Resources Police.

The Conowingo Dam is a magnet for eagle-watchers. Here, as the waters of the Susquehanna River surge through the gates of the 4,500-foot-long dam, anywhere from a half-dozen to 40 bald eagles can be seen perched on electrical transmission towers, soaring overhead and swooping into the frothing current for a meal. Getting the perfect shot with that digital camera, however, is a little harder. Bob Dorsch of Newark, Del., recently was explaining the nature-themed few days he had in store for grandsons Benjamin Dorsch, 9, and Cameron Dorsch, 6, when an eagle suddenly flew overhead.

You can't get there from here," the punch line to an old New England joke about asking for directions, could also apply to Maryland anglers attempting to find access to the water. It is, however, a cruel joke: a state with thousands of miles of waterfront and fewer and fewer ways to get there. Shoreline development and a bumper crop of "No Trespassing" signs have put the squeeze on folks who don't live on the water or have a boat or have friends who have boats. At a meeting at Department of Natural Resources headquarters earlier this month, perch fishermen ticked off a number of traditional fishing spots that are no longer available to them.