Should Des Moines get rid of its dams?

The looming obstacles in a plan for water trails through Des Moines are two downtown dams, one at Center Street and another at Scott Avenue.

Between the low-head dams is a dead space of Des Moines River — pleasant to gaze upon from the riverwalk, but illegal to enter, for good reason: Fifteen people have died at the Center Street dam.

Several smaller communities in Iowa have addressed dam issues, prompting Des Moines leaders who are part of a water trails plan committee to take a road trip last week to find out how.

Elkader and Manchester got rid of dams.

The mitigation in the two small towns in northeast Iowa created whitewater parks that have become tourist attractions this summer.

EARLIER: Iowans are removing low-head dams, creating whitewater parks

Conservation officials say most dams don't serve a purpose

During the July 4 weekend, Manchester city officials said, a figurative "flash mob" of 1,000 people appeared at the site where a former downtown dam was removed and a whitewater course of six drops, or stair steps, was created around the curve of the Maquoketa River. That same weekend in nearby Elkader, some 250 people in kayaks took off on a float down the river. The removal of a four-foot dam and addition of a single whitewater feature called the "Gobbler" and a park created new access and connection to the river.

Most of the 246 dams on major Iowa rivers are low-head dams that no longer serve a purpose, state conservation officials say. They were originally built decades ago for mills, hydroelectric power, flood control, recreation or simply the beauty of having water spilling over the structure.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has undertaken a program to eliminate some of them, and 13 mitigation projects are complete.

The economic benefits of a whitewater park

A group of a dozen Des Moines officials with the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, state and county conservation departments and nonprofit conservation agencies were researching what other towns have done that could help Des Moines connect area residents to its waterways, including the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers and other creeks and rivers in the metro area. The MPO was hired by the Iowa DNR to come up with a plan.

"When the river flooded, we cursed it. The rest of the time we ignored it," Jack Klaus told them in Manchester.

They knew a plan to create a whitewater park to reconnect the city to its river was a costly solution, especially for a town of 5,100 people, but the executive director of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce said the fundraising pitch was effective.

It would make Manchester more livable for residents; it would provide economic benefits with increased visitors; it would promote Manchester as a place to move to.

That last point connected with Rick Tollakson, president and CEO of Hubbell Realty in Des Moines, who leads the MPO's water trails committee. He says that while assurances of a measurable return on investment to an expensive project is important, business leaders are also seeking ways to attract young people to the workforce. Quality-of-life features like Manchester's whitewater park may be one way to do it.

Watching kayakers surf the whitewater waves in Iowa

The pitch from Manchester water park advocates worked. More than $600,000 in private donations poured in and was combined with state grants to allow the $2 million Manchester Whitewater Park to open earlier this summer.

Officials found that the majority of initial users were on inner tubes. Some even strapped on life jackets and body-surfed through the six whitewater waves. The water pools after each feature for added safety.

The riverside banks, considered a back alley of sorts that parents told their children to avoid when the dam roared nearby, were landscaped to create steps of limestone down to the water's edge.

Ryan Wicks, the Fehr Graham engineer on the project, said that Manchester now feels a lot more like the small town people remember. "You see people down here talking to each other again," he said.

In both Manchester and Elkader, city officials couldn't yet put a number on the economic impact of the parks.

It cost $390,000 to build the whitewater feature and another $185,000 for riverbank development along the Turkey River in Elkader, a town of 1,200. A park and shelter sit near the banks of the river now and people watch kayakers like Tom Gifford surf the 22-foot wide wave, a chute created where a dam once prohibited passage.

Gifford, who was a key figure in launching the plan, demonstrated what can be confusing to people who don't whitewater kayak, a specific subset of paddlers. The feature created in Elkader is known as a "play hole." Kayakers don't burst through it, but turn to face the wave, allowing them to surf, or do tricks such as spins and cartwheels.

"I had to travel hundreds of miles for whitewater," Gifford said. "I believe we are the smallest city in the country with a whitewater feature."

Converting the naysayers

A larger dam still sits upstream, but residents were too tied to the nostalgia of fishing with their dad or memories of getting engaged near it to consider its mitigation, city officials said. It's also a bigger dam with a steeper drop.

Even the smaller dam created opposition from residents who thought its mitigation would destroy part of their local heritage. Others worried about the elimination of a prime fishing hole.

But Linda Applegate of the nonprofit Iowa Rivers Revival shared studies with trip members that showed earlier dam mitigations in Iowa have increased the numbers and diversity of fish upstream.

The whitewater park in Elkader has converted the naysayers, says Mayor Bob Garms. Elkader completes a circuit of whitewater parks — including Manchester and Charles City — that have attracted out-of-state visitors on pleasant weekends.

If Des Moines mitigated a dam to add whitewater features, Elkader officials say, Iowa would be the whitewater park capital of the country.

Rich Leopold, director of Polk County Conservation, said during the trip that there are numerous factors to consider, including federal standards that govern stream flow and changes to water levels at various points in the river. He also pointed the the fact that several government agencies are involved in dam mitigation in a large river through a metropolitan area.

Teva Dawson, the MPO's senior transportation planner, said the committee isn't trying to come up with solutions yet. The first task is creating a vision.