A Dam Struggle

A Dam Struggle. . If you were one of the men who owned a mill at this site between 1835 and 1897, you needed a dam to pool the water to power it., For 30 years you built your dam out of brush, straw and mud. When spring floods carried it downstream, you watched and rebuilt. When summer rains did the same, you watched and rebuilt. , , For a dozen years you piled oaks across the river, and when rushing waters floated pieces downstream, you watched and rebuilt. , , You then secured logs with planks and boulders, creating a dam that would face the river for over 20 years. And in 1897 when the mill burned down, you watched and then left, and when the new owner cleared away the rubble, he knocked the dam down, too. , , In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps built a new dam , a scenic recreational dam , along this stretch. But by the late 1900s ecologists realized that dams were bad for the environment. Fish and mussels could not move upstream to reproduce, and decomposing plants and animals trapped in upstream pools stripped the water of oxygen. In 2011 the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County and DuPage County Stormwater Management with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration removed the dam at Warrenville Grove Forest Preserve for the last time. The limestone retaining walls from the 1930s remain as reminders of the long relationship between dams and this stretch of the West Branch DuPage River.