Opening Up the Weir

A small crowd of Habitat Stewards and Nature Center staff began to gather at about 1 this afternoon to watch the dam being removed at the north lake.

Using a combination of heavy equipment and hand labor, the sandbag dam that had been keeping the north lake from flowing into the stream was removed.

The dam at the south lake had already been removed and the fall is so short between the two lakes that the stream had backed up all the way to the dam at the north lake.  This made the breaching of the weir rather anticlimactic, but it was still terrific to hear the water babbling over the weir again. 

Once the dam was removed, the contractor finished the boulder treatment of the west bank, placing a large boulder in the place where the dam had been.  The crowd of onlookers was very impressed by the contractor's teamwork and delicate touch with the back hoe.

This is what the weir and the 1st bridge look like now.  In case you don't remember or didn't ever see it, below is what the weir looked like at the start of this project.  The first photo is looking downstream from the 1st bridge, the second photo is looking east across the weir.