cfrw.us Blog

The long awaited fish bypass project at Lock & Dam #1 has gotten a green light.  So for everybody who’s been wondering “where’s my stimulus money?” well, here it is.

From the Feb 7, 2010 Star News:

More than a decade after it first promised to do it, the Army Corps of Engineers has announced plans to build a fish bypass at Lock and Dam No. 1 on the Cape Fear River.

The $12 million project, which was mandated by environmental regulators in the late 1990s as mitigation for the deepening of the Cape Fear River shipping channel, has languished because of budget constraints and a lack of priority for the corps.

But President Obama’s stimulus bill freed up money for the work, which will see a series of rock pools built to allow migratory fish such as striped bass and American shad to get upstream to spawn.

“We’ve always had this project on our radar, and now we’re excited to be able to start moving forward on this,” said Penny Schmitt, spokeswoman for the corps’ Wilmington district, adding that the bypass will have a natural look.

Money for the fish bypass wasn’t approved during the first round of stimulus funding allocations, although it had been recommended by the local corps district.

But Schmitt said that lower-than-expected bids for some work, coupled with problems in other corps districts getting projects approved, made the project possible.

Also pleased that the project will finally get built are environmentalists and fishermen, who hope commercial and recreational fishing industries along the Cape Fear will recover as they have in the Roanoke River watershed. . .

Full article here

From the December 13 Raleigh News and Observer http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local_state/story/238382.html

ELIZABETHTOWN Like the river that filled so much of his life, Horace W. Butler Jr. is moving slow.

More than 88 years, a few bouts with arthritis and an 8-foot tree limb that “cracked my head like a coconut” will do that to a man.

But Butler, the last of the river men of the Cape Fear, still has every snag, every bend and bow in that grand, muddy waterway locked in his memory. And more than 50 years after he steered the last raft of logs from Fayetteville downriver, he could talk you all the way to Wilmington – if you had the time.

“It took a bit of time,” Butler said. “About five days, coming from Fayetteville. When the water was low and the wind was calm, we were moving at about a half-mile an hour.

“These days, that seems kind of slow, I guess. Back then, it seemed to move along just fine.”

There are no more loggers on the Cape Fear. Nobody’s seen one of the mammoth rafts skirting places like Pinch Gut Creek, Bullfrog Cut and Pull and Be Damned Landing since about Thanksgiving 1957.

Nearly all the landings are gone, too. Decades devoid of commerce allowed the woods and brambles to reclaim spots that once held thriving little businesses. Raccoons and possums, and the occasional alligator, are the only customers now.

“The river is slow, but it doesn’t stand still,” Butler mused. “It’s all grown back.”

Schooled on the river

Born in 1921 near the Bladen County town of Dublin, Butler’s playground, his church and home was the Cape Fear River. His bedtime stories were tales of the river, shared by his father and other rafters. In the summer, his lullaby was the soft slapping of water as each raft rolled toward Wilmington, pierced by the steam whistle of ships like the City of Fayetteville.

A trip to Wilmington on the ship cost $3, including meals.

It didn’t cost anything to ride the rafts, other than a lot of sweat.

“I was on the rafts early in life,” Butler said. “I never knew nothing but hard work. I didn’t get but a fifth-grade education in school, but I learned a lot on the river.”

Butler grew up short and wiry, with quick reflexes. He learned how to swing a broadax, and was soon helping his dad lash together hundreds of trees with nails the size of railroad spikes for their rides downriver.

“They’d roll the logs down the bank into the water,” Butler said. “Our job was to take care of them once they got there. There was all sorts of logs in a raft. It didn’t have to be one kind of wood.”

His dad taught him the basics of making each raft, how to judge timber and how to keep the raft from smashing into the riverbank, splintering a week’s worth of work in minutes.

“I guess it would be a boy’s dream, but I can tell you it was a lot of work,” Butler said. “You think about floating along on a raft, and it seems like the easiest thing in the world. But that’s your livelihood you’re riding on. You had to stay on top of things.”

When he turned 16, Butler says, his dad let him “fall heir” to rafting. His dad took care of the business end. All Butler had to do was get the logs downstream.

“We’d have a 16-foot-long gig pole with a hook on the end,” he said. “You’d use it to get the logs lined up, then use clamps to hold them together.”

Trees were almost uniformly cut to lengths of 10 feet to 16 feet – perfect for the lumber mills in Wilmington. Rafts could be no wider than 40 feet, about the width of a tennis court, but some stretched up to a mile or more long.

“They couldn’t be any wider because of the locks,” Butler said, referring to a series of structures that helped boats navigate the river. “But they could be long. You’d just unclamp the logs at the lock, then reclamp them as you went through.

“There were crooks in the river where you’d be on one end of a raft and couldn’t even see the other end. And all of it being pushed by the river. You have a 40-foot oar to steer, and beyond that it was all river.”

A small crew

Usually the rafts were large enough to hold a couple of small john boats, in case anyone needed to go ashore for supplies. The small crew pitched pup tents on deck and built fires for cooking and warmth in the winter.

The crew carried provisions, occasionally augmenting the menu with fish or hunted raccoon, possum and squirrel.

A string of small stores lined the river, each with its own landing. Most were at ferry crossings.

“You could get what you needed from Waddell’s Ferry or Cain Tuck Landing,” he said. “From there on, you’d better have what you needed to Wilmington. You were on your own.”

Butler says he never lost a raft, though he found a few that other rafters had lost. “Made a little extra money on those runs,” he said with a laugh.

There were winters on the river so cold that the raft crunched ice as it floated. Some summers were so dry the rafts would scrape the river bottom.

Gators were occasional companions, floating along like stray logs. And one time, a rattlesnake decided to hitch a ride with the crew.

“We had to get a big ol’ stick and take care of him,” Butler recalled. On other occasions, confused mullet would leap onto the deck, becoming a suppertime stew. One time a huge sturgeon stranded itself on the raft.

“You never knew what would happen,” he said. “That was life on the river.”

After a time, Butler met and married Lucille, a girl from Elizabethtown.

Eventually, they settled in town.

By then, life along the river was changing.

Improved roads and transportation had taken many of the lucrative rafting jobs. River traffic all but vanished.

In November 1957, Butler made his final run down the river.

He lashed a load of lumber near the bluffs behind the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Fayetteville.

It was a big load, one that took about two weeks to prepare – a fitting farewell for the last of the river men.

After that, Butler continued to work in timber and worked on the last two tugs that pushed cargo up the river.

“The march of life brings changes,” he said. “We all just flow with it.”

The following position statement was adopted by the Cape Fear River Watch Board of Directors on the recommendation of its Advocacy Committee:

Bringing Back the Cape Fear River Fisheries

A Return of Abundance

Established in 1993, Cape Fear Riverwatch is a non-profit organization dedicated to the improvement and preservation of the health, beauty, cleanliness, and heritage of the Cape Fear River basin. Our mission is to protect and improve the water quality of the Lower Cape Fear River Basin through education, advocacy and action.

Background:

In 1910, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) authorized the construction of the first of three lock and dams on the Cape Fear River. Lock and Dam #1 was completed in 1915 and shortly afterward Lock and Dam #2 was constructed in 1917. And in 1935, William O. Huske Lock and Dam (Lock and Dam #3) was completed. The three lock and dams on the Cape Fear River are located at 39, 71, and 95 miles above Wilmington, North Carolina. These structures were initially authorized by the USACE to ensure a navigable channel for commercial barge traffic from Wilmington to Fayetteville, 111 miles upriver. For many years, river commerce thrived and industries flourished.
While the economies of Fayetteville, Wilmington and the surrounding counties prospered as a result of river commerce, anadromous fish populations such as American shad, Striped bass, Blue back herring, Atlantic and Shortnose sturgeon began to decline. These fish spend their entire lives in the ocean and return to the rivers where they were born in order to spawn. These fish must have access to their traditional spawning grounds located far above Fayetteville in order to support their populations. Now there was a concrete structure blocking the way. The year after Lock and Dam #1 was completed, the Wilmington Morning Star printed an article about the immediate collapse of the shad fishery above Lock and Dam #1. American shad, prior to the construction of the lock and dam system on the Cape Fear River, was considered to be the most economically valuable fish species in North Carolina. Local communities that depended upon the return of American shad every year were now struggling without the extra incomes provided by this fish that once turned the river silver with their incredible numbers. For many decades the fading fisheries that supported so many families were ignored in exchange for commercial growth of the Cape Fear region. Presently, the American shad spawning runs up the Cape Fear River are but a shadow of their historical numbers. Shortnose sturgeon are listed as an “Endangered Species” in the Cape Fear River by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The Blue back herring fishery, just as economically important to many eastern communities as the American shad fishery was in the early twentieth century, now has a total fishing ban in the Cape Fear River basin.
In 1997, a fish ladder was installed at Lock and Dam #1 to aid American shad and Blue back herring to pass over the dam and gain access to an additional 33 miles of river. However, the fish ladder failed to pass an adequate number of fish nor was it successful in passing other species of anadromous fish such as sturgeon or striped bass. A nature-like fish passage was then proposed by the USACE and would involve re-creating a stream through the adjacent floodplain at Lock and Dam #1 which would allow migrating fish to swim around the dam and re-enter the Cape Fear River approximately 2000 feet upstream of the Dam. Beginning in 2002, the USACE began studying the pre-construction conditions of the Cape Fear River from Lock and Dam #1 to Wilmington. This study would include a comprehensive tag and recapture program tracking the migratory patterns of anadromous fish species of the Cape Fear River. For three years American shad, Striped bass, and Atlantic sturgeon were captured, fitted with sonic tags, and tracked up and down the Cape Fear River in order to learn more about their current population and the extent to which these fish utilize the Cape Fear River in their life histories. This study documented the presence of a small population of American shad and Striped bass that still return to the river each year. It also documented the absence of sturgeon species as well, confirming the realities of a river system segmented by dams. Even though the USACE has been performing regular passage of fish through the lock chambers at all three dams for many years, the numbers of fish that actually pass to the upstream side of the dams are minimal. It is estimated that only 40% of the fish that reach Lock and Dam #1 pass through the regular lock passages. Repeat this scenario at the remaining two lock and dams and it is easy to see that only a very small number of the fish needed to sustain a healthy population are actually reaching their spawning grounds. In 2005, due to funding difficulties at the federal level, the nature-like fish passage construction was postponed indefinitely and a study was instigated to re-evaluate the lock and dam system as a whole.

In 2006, the USACE began a study, Section 216, to re-evaluate the status of the three Lock and Dams and and to recommend a plan for their future. These lock and dams were constructed to maintain a navigable channel for commercial traffic between Wilmington and Fayetteville. However, from 1965 to 1995, commercial traffic steadily declined and in 1995, only one barge was reported to have been passed through Lock and Dam #1 during the entire year. The bulk of the usage for three lock and dams has been locking recreational boats up and down river. The USACE still incurs an annual cost of $1 million dollars in order to operate and maintain these lock and dams even though they are not performing their intended purpose. Currently the USACE is studying the feasibility of either changing the purpose of the dams, altering the construction of the dams in order to provide fish passage, removing the dams, or de-authorizing the dams to allow a private entity to take over their control and maintenance. This study is still on-going and is near completion. Many factors have to be examined and considered before a final plan for the lock and dams can be approved. Most importantly, the City of Wilmington and Lower Brunswick Sewer Authority both have water supply intakes located just upstream of Lock and Dam #1. The City of Fayetteville depends upon Lock and Dam # 3 for creating a dependable water supply. These secondary uses of the lock and dams (providing consistent water supplies) poses a difficult problem because these facilities cannot be moved or altered without great expense.
Position: The Board of Directors of Cape Fear River Watch (CFRW), a community grassroots organization whose mission is conservation of the Cape Fear River, is concerned about the future of the lock and dam system on the Cape Fear River. Anadromous fish populations such as the Striped bass, American Shad, Blueback herring and Shortnose and Atlantic sturgeons have suffered from human impacts throughout their range, from water quality degradation in the Cape Fear watershed, overfishing in the ocean and river, and perhaps most significantly, the lack of adequate passage through the lock and dam system on the Cape Fear River effectively eliminating access to historical spawning grounds far above Fayetteville. We encourage the USACE to continue its current “216 Study” of the changing role of the aging lock and dam system on the Cape Fear River and to consider all feasible alternatives to the locks that achieve the goals of all stakeholders with an interest in the Cape Fear River Basin. Cape Fear River Watch strongly supports the current alternative posed by the USACE to place rock arch rapids on the downstream side of each dam in order to provide sufficient passage of anadromous fish over the top of the dams versus through the lock chambers.
Action:In order to facilitate the transfer of information from the USACE to the general public, CFRW has initiated a public forum, inviting members of public to participate in an exchange of questions and ideas with representatives of the USACE, N. C. Wildlife Resource Commission, N. C. Department of Natural Resources, City of Wilmington, and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Cape Fear River Watch is dedicated to preserving and restoring fish populations to the Cape Fear River and promotes any initiatives aimed at improving fish passage around the three lock and dams. However, CFRW will not support any change which will jeopardize municipal water supply. CFRW will strongly encourage that there be thorough consideration given to the benefits that could be derived from the establishment of rock weirs at the locks and the ultimate acquisition of the surrounding land for the establishment of a Park. Cape Fear River Watch will continue to monitor the USACE Section 216 study and will attempt to keep the public informed as to the status of the Cape Fear River lock and dams. Cape Fear River Watch strongly supports any efforts to restore fish populations to the Cape Fear River system. Successful recovery of these once prolific fish populations will have tremendous impacts upon the Cape Fear region both ecologically and economically. Larger, predatory fish species, such as king mackerel would return in great numbers to feed on the bounty of shad and blue back herring thus attracting the lucrative recreational fishing industry to invest in our coastal communities. Striped bass would return to the Cape Fear River in numbers like those of Roanoke and Hudson Rivers. A return of shad and herring would also support greater populations of the wildlife which draws us to the water including bottlenose dolphin, wading birds, osprey, and otters.

Sincerely,

CFRW Board of Directors