BRIDGEWATER — Gravel bars and free-flowing water are signs that the river has begun to return to a more natural state following the removal of the second of three Somerset County dams along the Raritan River.

But it's too early to tell whether the removal of the Robert Street dam this month and the Calco dam last year will do much to achieve the long range fishing and recreation goals of the multi-year effort.

The Nevius Street dam, downstream in Raritan Borough, remains embroiled in negotiations between the state Department of Environmental Protection and Duke Farms, in Hillsborough, which owns the dam.

The Robert Street dam is the second of three on the Raritan to be removed by El Paso Corp. under terms of an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Protection as compensation for the public for harm to natural resources it caused by pollution elsewhere in the state, according to DEP Commissioner Bob Martin.

The removal of the Nevius Street dam, the Robert Street dam and the Calco dam, which spans the Raritan River near Route 287, is intended to open a 10-mile stretch of the middle and upper portions of the river to fish migration and spawning for the first time in more than a century, according to Martin.

Meanwhile the depth of the one-and-a-quarter-mile "impoundment" of water once held back by the Robert Street dam has dropped about four feet, according to North Plainfield resident Rich Washkau, who regularly fishes there from the Bridgewater bank.

Washkau said he's pulled large trout, smallmouth bass and walleye from pools upstream of the dam and in the spillway below it. Fishermen he’s talked to, he said, “worry they won’t be able to find them again.”

He was fishing on Friday, Aug. 24, about 100 meters upstream of the site of the former dam, where the river has shrunk, bank to bank, about half its breadth. “It’s been a good spot in the past,” he said, casting a fake worm into the river.

He pointed upstream to where an exposed gravel bed extends more than half-way across the river. Before, he said, “That was a shallow bar.”

Almost immediately, Washkau hooked an 8-inch smallmouth bass. “A future lunker,” he said, tossing back the young fish. “Smaller than usual.”

The effort to return the 10-mile stretch of the river to a free-flowing state has been hampered by fears that removal of the Nevius Street dam would cause a complex system of eight ponds on the 2,740-acre Duke property to dry up, according to Executive Director Timothy Taylor. He calls the dam, "the Duke dam."

Water held back by the dam is then pumped 1.5 miles upstream to 81 feet above ground to supply the ponds. Taylor has called the complex of ponds and streams “among the three finest lagoon landscapes in the country.”

Taylor visited the site of the Robert Street dam last week. “El Paso did an excellent job,” Taylor said today, Aug. 27.

“We knew it would lower the elevation of the river by three feet,” he said, “and wanted to see the impact on the shoreline as (the river) came toward the Duke dam.”

What he found was a “noticeable” reduction in the width of the stream, exposing more of the shoreline. Biologists from Kinder Morgan Inc., which now owns El Paso, found that native plants were already coming up from the embankment and the number of shore birds had increased. “We were ecstatic to see that,” Taylor said.

There has been no impact on the flow of water to the ponds so far, he said, but Duke Farms and Kinder Morgan engineers are considering potential alternatives to keeping the Nevius Street dam intact, he said. “Finding out how to keep the ponds fed is up to Kinder Morgan now,” he said.

Duke Farms officials want to “go through a season” to see how the removal of the Robert Street dam affects the river from late September to late November, he said, “when it gets engorged” and typically floods the adjacent portion of Duke Farms.

Taylor said he expected Duke Farms trustees to make a decision about the Nevius Street dam by next summer.



Reach Warren Cooper at wcooper@njnpublishing.com or 908-948-1261.

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