The county showed up today and completely removed the dam. It took hours. It wasn't terribly cold out today, but I'm sure that water is chilly, and the two guys spent a lot of time wading in it. I don't envy them the job.

A couple of days ago, after a down pour, that's what the dam looked like. (Except that the picture doesn't do it justice. There's something wrong with my camera; pictures taken under overcast skies come out with hardly any contrast. I had to process all of these so that they were even recognizable, and they don't look like reality, at all. Maybe it's time for me to get a new one.)

First thing they did was tear a big gap in it. Then they waited an hour or more while the pond began to drain out. I figure there were a couple acre-feet of water behind it to get rid of, and it was going to take a while.

Once the water level was down a bit, and more of the dam was exposed, they started tearing out branches and generally dismantling it. They ended up with an amazing pile of branches and general debris on the bank, which they hauled away in a wheelbarrow.

And by this point a couple of hours later the whole dam was gone. But the job wasn't over. Rapids like that are attractive to beavers; it's why they built the dam in the first place. If the county wants to prevent a reemergence, they have to dredge out the bottom of the creek. So they had another hour or more of wading around, working on the bottom with rakes.

And now they're gone, and this is how it looks. There's still a rapids there, and it won't surprise me if they come back tomorrow and work on it some more.

It also won't surprise me if we see more beaver activity out there.

By the way, in that last picture you can clearly see the cut in the culvert caused by erosion, due to the fact that the concrete pipes are clogged. That's another thing the county is going to have to do something about, sooner or later.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 03:40 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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