City preparing report on Dan River dams

Danville’s interim city manager said his office is preparing a report on the Dan River’s dams and is exploring ways to make them safer.

The report will take several weeks to complete, said Joe King, interim city manager.

Kolton Brim Karnes, 5, has been missing since Monday when his father’s boat flipped at a dam near the Brantley Steam Plant. The father and son were fishing in the Dan River before the accident.

King said documentation shows that the city considered removing the dams in the 1970s, and he thinks the Brantley Steam Plant dam — where Monday’s accident occurred — falls under city ownership.

“We are also doing preliminary assessments on what we may be able to do to remove some of the risks without removing the dams,” King said.

His office is preparing the report for Danville City Council.

A spokeswoman for American Rivers, a conservation organization that supports river restoration, said local officials can remove a dam in a couple of years, depending on the project’s specifics.

Serena McClain is an associate director for river restoration for American Rivers.

Dam removal comes from the consensus of the owner and of the public, she said. Then the owner hires a design firm, which studies the effect of the dam on the river, sediment buildup around the dam, contamination and how to remove the dam, among other issues.

The design firm also studies the impact on fishing if the dam is removed.

“Just because you remove the dam doesn’t mean the fishing hole disappears,” McClain said, adding that sometimes the fishing becomes better.

The studies are put together to create the firm’s design.

“Once you’ve got your design it’s really a matter of state permitting,” McClain said.

Many federal and state grants are available for dam removals, she said. The grants require that the removal has a positive ecological impact.

“There’s not really funding available out there to remove a dam because it’s not safe,” she said.

But dam removal often solves safety and ecology issues.

“Most of the dams that we help get funding for, 75 percent of them have safety concerns,” McClain said.

Cities can clearly mark dangerous dams with signs and rope off the water around them if they do not remove the dams, she said.

“They call them drowning machines for a reason,” McClain said. “They create a really dangerous hydraulic.”

Bill Sgrinia, director of Danville Parks and Recreation, said warning signs have been posted on the riverbank around the Brantley dam for years. But flooding often washes them away. Sgrinia said his department is thinking about putting sturdier signs in — a sign was back on the site Friday — and a divider across the river to warn boaters about the dam. A divider was not on the river Monday.

““It’s unfortunate,” Sgrinia said. “This is a dangerous river all the way around.”