New Hyde Lake dam may finally put end to falling water levels
by Denny Watkins, Watertown Daily Times staff writer
First published: Tuesday, March 22, 2005
THERESA - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is hoping to outbuild the beavers at Hyde Lake. For more than three decades, the 197-acre lake has suffered periodic drops in water levels by 2 to 6 feet when the beaver dams at the end of the lake - and later man-made attempts to buttress them - collapsed and sent gallons of water rushing down the streambed and across Fredericks Road.
AMANDA VOISARD / WATERTOWN DAILY TIMES
Carl E. Schwartz, coordinator for Partners for U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Joyce L. Schell, president of Save Hyde Lake, survey the restoration project Monday at Hyde Lake in Theresa.
On Friday, the Fish and Wildlife Service finished construction of a low, narrow dam and a U-shaped array of large rocks in the stream below designed to keep the lake at a nearly constant water level. "What would have happened without it is it would have eroded down deeper, because there's nothing really to prevent it, and that would have dropped the levels down even more," said Carl W. Schwartz, state coordinator for Partners for Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Mr. Schwartz said it took him about three weeks to find a low-cost but effective solution and design the project. It is designed around a concept called fluvial geomorphology, which involves researching the historical flow of a stream and building a natural-looking mechanism to restore the wetland to its original state. Using surveys made by one of the homeowners on the lake, Mr. Schwartz determined how high the water was supposed to be and set the dam at that height.
The dam is made from 1/8-inch sheets of corrugated PVC, almost like house siding, stretching across the end of the lake for about 30 yards and buried 12 feet into the ground. The PVC is capped with wood and plastic, with a dip in the center for the stream, and buttressed by 240 tons of fist-sized rocks so the cap is barely visible. "Instead of being a dam that would have a big water control structure, this will just work like a riffle" - essentially creating a broad shallow pool while allowing the stream to continue flowing, Mr. Schwartz said. A few yards past the rock pile and PVC sheet, a horseshoe of large rocks, each about two feet across, helps prevent the water coming down from the dam from eroding the banks of the stream. "What it does is it makes the water fold to the center of the stream channel, so it's not hitting the bank and banging away at the bank, then banging away at the other bank," Mr. Schwartz said. It also creates a shallow pool before the rocks, which is a good habitat for invertebrates and food for fish, and then cuts a deep pool just downstream. He said that the angle, depth and layout of the rocks are precisely engineered to achieve the effect he wants. At the same time, the rocks themselves are meant to look like they have always been there. "When it's all done, it's supposed to look like nature did it on its own," Mr. Schwartz said. "It's not supposed to look highly engineered, but it is."
The project cost close to $20,000, $10,000 of which was provided by Save Hyde Lake, an organization of people who own homes on the lake. Joyce L. Schell, Weedsport, president of Save Hyde Lake, said lake residents spent about 35 years trying to get the water level under control. "We had a lot of dead ends," Ms. Schell said as she thumbed through photos of people stacking sandbags around the beaver dam and other attempts to engineer a solution. "It was difficult finding funding."
Neil E. Wilson, 80, Theresa, owns part of the property the dam sits on, and nearby Wilson's Hyde Lake Campsite. He said the project looked "perfect; I didn't know how it was going to turn out." "In that sense it's kind of an experiment that we can get some habitat and some happy landowners without it being a large-scale project," Mr. Schwartz said.
The dark earth around the stream was a bit torn up from the machinery brought in for the construction, and some trees were cut down to prevent beavers from bringing them down and crushing the dam. But Mr. Schwartz said that by summer, enough plants should have grown around the stream to camouflage the project. "Almost any project after we finish it has got this ugly time," Mr. Schwartz said. "After it gets greened up you'll hardly know it's there."
Posted with permission from the Watertown Daily Times, Bob Gorman, managing editor.