Conowingo Dam

Back in the good old days, so goes a common lament, Harford County was country. Then came suburban sprawl and things just haven't been the same. Well, certainly it's true things aren't the way they were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're worse. A case in point is the photograph snapped recently by Bill Olfson of a bald eagle feasting on a deer carcass. Mr. Olfson sent us the picture and we published it Wednesday. For those who missed it, the shot shows a spectacular and majestic example of our national symbol doing what such creatures do in the wild: taking advantage of an easy meal.

More traffic delays are expected on Route 1 over Conowingo Dam during the day Thursday, the dam's owner said. Personnel from the Conowingo Hydroelectric Generating Station will move crest gates from the upper parking lot at the Conowingo Visitor Center to the Conowingo Dam after the completion of regular maintenance and repairs, dam owner Exelon Generation said in a news release. To move these large crest gates, it will be necessary to temporarily delay traffic on Route 1 in both directions from Route 222 on the Cecil County side of the dam to Shures Landing Road, just south of Conowingo on the Harford County side.

Motorists who travel on the Route 1 bridge across the Susquehanna River in northern Harford County can expect temporary delays Tuesday and Wednesday. Crews from the Conowingo Hydroelectric Generating Station will move crest gates from the dam to the upper parking lot at the Conowingo Visitor Center for regular maintenance and repairs. Moving the large gates will temporarily delay traffic in both directions on Route 1 from Route 222 to Shures Landing Road, just south of Conowingo Dam on the Harford County side.

As taken from the pages of The Aegis dated Thursday, March 29, 1962: Twenty-one hundred gallons of mash, dozens of empty 100-pound sugar bags and an undisclosed amount of moonshine whiskey were confiscated by officials in a raid on a farm near Abingdon. The still, in a one-story, 30-by-20 foot cinder block house adjoining the main house, was one of the largest ever found in Maryland. Most of the bootleg whiskey was being manufactured in Harford County but was being sold in Baltimore County.

The Maryland State Highway Administration has postponed the planned closure of Route 1 at Conowingo Dam until Monday, Nov. 14, the agency said Wednesday, citing weather concerns. The SHA had planned to close part of Route 1 at Conowingo Dam all day Thursday in order to resurface and repair highway damage at the intersection of Routes 1 and Route 222 (Rock Spring Road) caused by a fuel tanker truck accident and spill Oct. 26. The same work will now be done Monday because inclement weather was forecast for Thursday, SHA spokesman Charlie Gischlar said.

Two weeks after Tropical Storm Lee flushed millions of tons of mud into the Chesapeake Bay, state and federal officials announced Tuesday they are launching a study of how to protect the estuary from sediment and other pollutants building up behind dams on the Susquehanna River. Experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland departments of environment and natural resources and the Nature Conservancy, a Washington-based conservation group, will team up for the $1.4 million, three-year evaluation of how to deal with sediment accumulating upriver from the Conowingo Dam and three other hydroelectric facilities on the Susquehanna.

It's had its ups and downs since long before there was a Harford County, a Maryland or even a person of European heritage living on its banks. The Susquehanna River just experienced one of those ups, and it'll be on the slow way down for at least another week or two -  unless there's more rain. We've got no control over those kinds of ups and downs. But the Susquehanna has had other kinds of ups and downs at our hands. A few weeks back, before Irene and Lee were even tropical disturbances, there was a report, recounted in this newspaper, by one of the agencies that keeps track of the Susquehanna that noted a substantial buildup of sediment on the upriver side of Conowingo Dam. These things happen.

Officials in Port Deposit said Saturday that 30 floodgates remained open at the Conowingo Dam as water steadily receded, though the town remained under its mandatory evacuation. "It's looking a lot better than yesterday," said Mike Dixon, Cecil County spokesman. "The water is slowly receding, so it appears the worst has passed. But it will take some time for it to clear out. " As Port Deposit and Havre de Grace continued to deal with flooding and debris in the streets Friday, the Conowingo Dam's operator said a surge in water coming down the Susquehanna River, officials had anticipated opening all of the Dam's 50 floodgates; the most that were opened during the flooding caused by heavy rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee was 43 on Thursday night.

As the flood waters from the Susquehanna River started to recede Saturday, Havre de Grace and Perryville were recovering, while Port Deposit officials were still evaluating flood damage and had not allowed residents to return to the town as of midday The river actually reached its crest, peak stage level — 32.41 feet, at Conowingo Dam Friday at 9:15 a.m., according to flow gauge data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The peak water flow through the massive structure, which reached 778,000 cubic feet per second, was less than what dam officials and emergency officials on both sides of the river had initially expected as the Susquehanna carried off the torrents of rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. Still, based upon historical data, the river at Conowingo Friday rose to the third highest level in the 83-year-old dam's history.

Times change. Sometimes it's for the better. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes it's a little of both. Way back when Conowingo Dam was built 82 years ago, the territory along the lower Susquehanna River was relatively wild and remote, the ideal place for a sporting cottage, a base of operations for fishing, hunting, boating and otherwise enjoying the Susquehanna Valley. Unlike other major rivers along the Eastern Seaboard like the Connecticut, Delaware, or James, the Susquehanna isn't a shipping route inland, so, unlike the other rivers of comparable size, it's lower reaches remained, and to some degree remain even now, relatively wild.