Savage Dam is Safe

Disabled release gate at Savage River Dam not a safety hazard

Michael A. Sawyers

BLOOMINGTON - The inability to quickly fix a disabled release gate at Savage River Dam does not affect the safety of the structure, but could lead to full drainage of the reservoir during one of the next two winters so that repairs can take place, according to Scott Shoemaker of the Upper Potomac River Commission.

Shoemaker said Tuesday that one of the dam's four release gates remains stuck in the down or closed position.

"We tried to access the area to look at a panel that operates the gate, but water prevented us from doing that," Shoemaker said, adding that steps were taken to reduce water pressure on the broken gate.

The commission continues to await a consultant's report about the fitness of the gates at the dam.

Shoemaker said it is possible that the report will show that more than one gate needs to be replaced.

"To do that, we may have to drain the reservoir," he said. "That would take place during the winter, possibly this winter or the next."

Shoemaker said operators began to refill the dam May 9. "Then we got all that rain and it refilled to full pool in nine days. It's spilling over today," Shoemaker said Tuesday. "The reservoir would have refilled under normal rain conditions. It just would have taken longer.

"It's important that people know we wouldn't refill the reservoir if we didn't know it was safe to do so," he said.

Alan Klotz, biologist with the Maryland Inland Fisheries Division, said the trout downstream of the dam survived recent flow shutdowns very well.

"We discovered that if the flow from the reservoir was shut down for no more than two hours, so they could investigate the gates, that the trout downstream had no problems," Klotz said.

Klotz and his crew monitored the river downstream during periodic flow shutdowns. "We found just three dead trout and we found no dead trout fry," he said, referring to recently hatched fish.

The river downstream of the dam is managed with special lure restrictions to facilitate the growth of brown and brook trout.

Klotz said a drainage of the reservoir would be a worst-case scenario from a fisheries standpoint, but he believes it would take place only as a last resort.

"I know the Upper Potomac River Commission is looking at a variety of other ways to deal with the gates rather than a total drainage," he said.

Should such a drainage come to pass, fishery crews would attempt to capture downstream trout and move them to the North Branch of the Potomac River, Klotz said.

Capturing the fish in the reservoir for transportation to other waters would be much more difficult, the biologist said.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.