Editor's note: This story was produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you're able, WCMU encourages you to listen to the audio. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dam and culvert removals are taking off across the state to revive ecosystems and reduce stress on infrastructure.
Federal and state funding has skyrocketed recently for river restoration, but one conservation group has spent the last two decades freeing a river in northern Michigan. The group now claims the Maple River is among the first in the country to be returned to its free-flowing state.
A timber bridge on Brutus Road, in Emmet County, is nothing out of the ordinary. A car zooms by every once in a while, causing the bridge to rumble slightly, but it's otherwise, a peaceful, nondescript scene.
The Maple River moves steadily below toward Burt Lake. But before the bridge was built, its predecessor — three undersized culverts —were an obstacle to the river.
"(The culverts) basically clog the river, like taking your bathtub and plugging half the drain up," said Chris Pierce, a biologist with the Conservation Resource Alliance.
Pierce said the culverts were causing backups on the river — warming the water, limiting fish passage and sometimes even flooding the road.
The Brutus bridge fixes these problems, and it was part of a larger project on the Maple to restore the river to its original state, before logging and damming sliced up rivers across the country in the 19th century.
"It was what built our country," Pierce said. "Little did we know the erosive factors that we were creating. We lost species and we lost soil. We lost a lot over time, and we're working on fixing that."
Pierce started working to improve fish passage on the Maple roughly 19 years ago, but he said the stars really aligned when multiple partners pitched in behind an ambitious goal: to free-span the entire Maple River.
It's taken $10 million and 21 separate projects that involved replacing culverts, molding in-stream habitats and a dam removal. Now, all 55 miles of the Maple River run freely.
A recent study conducted by the University of Michigan found that the project's "capstone," the removal of the Lake Kathleen Dam, has altered the Maple's water quality and bolstered natural habitats.
“About a decade ago, you could claim that 99% of all the rivers in North America had dams at some point … What you're doing is slicing these rivers up and making them smaller,” lead reseracher Paul Moore told Interlochen Public Radio in December.
"As you make rivers smaller, they have the potential for the whole ecosystem to go extinct… but by connecting rivers, you restore it to its full glory."
After the dam was taken out in 2019, the study reported that sediment loading substantially increased in the short-term but eventually stabilized. The study also says macroinvertebrates like crayfish, insects and worms have increased, which support birds and fish.
A potential beneficiary of the project is an endangered beetle that lives almost exclusively in the Maple River.
The Hungerford’s crawling water beetle was first discovered seventy years ago in the Maple River, and it’s only ever been found in 14 streams between northern Michigan and Ontario.
"When work is designed to preserve those habitat features they like, it can be great and reconnect the stream, so they can move through," said Michelle Kane, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kane said we don’t have a solid population estimate for the beetle. A 2002 survey counted just over a thousand in the Maple, but the beetles aren't easy to find, so it’s difficult to know how they’re doing.
But she said the beetles like cold-water streams and previous surveys have often found them by culverts. Kane said that could be due to sampling bias since culverts are often by roads and most accessible, but she hopes the Maple River restoration can give them a leg up.
“It’s not crazy to think that a blocked culvert can prevent them from dispersing," Kane said.
Just south of Pellston, the restaurant, the "Dam Site Inn," is the only indication the Lake Kathleen Dam ever existed.
The lake the dam supported is also gone, and instead, this is where the Maple's east and west branches meander into a single stream.
Pierce said the science supported removing the "high-hazard" dam, but the decision wasn't popular with everyone. Dam removals typically result in the loss of a beloved reservoir, and proposals are often met with heat.
"Our great-grandfathers built these dams, so there’s an attachment for the locals and constitutients," Pierce said.
But on a recent visit to the area, Pierce said a local — who's been fishing at the dam since the 50s and was initially against the removal — thanked him.
"He just looked at me and all the DNR folks and said, 'I've haven't had fishing this good in this river in so long, and the sediment’s moving, it's coming right back,'" Pierce said. "That felt good. It really did."
Rivers are always fighting back against structures that try to impede them, and instead of being a river’s enemy, Pierce said it’s fulfilling to free them.
