Initial East Branch restoration project is a go

UPPER JAY | The Essex County Board of Supervisors green-lighted a project in the Town of Jay to help restore the East Branch of the Ausable River to health, and hopefully reduce the severity of flooding caused by wintertime ice jams. While it's a small part of an overall plan to transform a river suffering from an industrial hangover, it gets the ball rolling on a mission of flood control, and is also one that will improve the river aesthetically and improve the habitat for fish. The supervisors' approval allows Jay to proceed with the $1 million project, which former Jay Supervisor Archie Depo said he hopes will start in the next few weeks and be completed by September. The town will pick up $345,000 of the costs out of its fund balance, Depo said. The project is located in the section of the river that's behind the old fire department in Upper Jay that was flooded out by Hurricane Irene a decade ago. The majority of the funding, in fact, is the last of the money appropriated to the town to mitigate storm damage caused by Irene and gird against future storms. While important, Depo said the project was not the town's first choice, among 13 trouble spots identified by the Ausable River Association. The hope was to restore a portion of the river above the Rt. 9N bridge in Upper Jay where ice tends to form upstream of a bend. But that bid came in $1 million above expectations, Depo said. The project was rebid, with no better results. "This (alternate project) won't cure the problem, but they feel it will help," Depo said. "We figured something is better than nothing, so at least this is a start." He said AsRA and the county office of community development are working on grant funding to hopefully address the higher-priority project in Upper Jay in 2022. They also hope to obtain funding to begin surveying another trouble spot in the river below the confluence of the East and West branches in Au Sable Forks. AsRA Executive Director Kelley Tucker said she suspects the high bids were an anomaly that's likely the result of too much-contracting demand and not enough supply as the result of the housing boom. "We were all very surprised by the very high bids," she said. "We've done these projects before and we have a pretty good idea of what they cost." On the bright side, the project is something of a bonus since it uses money that was targeted for the removal of the Rome Dam, a flood-mitigation project that came in well under budget. To even an unpracticed eye, the problems with the East Branch are apparent. It's wider and shallower than it should be, with broad fans of silt and cobble that are exposed in low water. Because it was widened by loggers for optimum transport of felled trees to the downstream mills, it lacks the typical channels and holes of a healthy stream. Without the power of a strong current, the river can't flush itself of silt, and the water becomes broader and shallower still. The slow, shallow water then becomes an ice-making machine. A warm-up can break up these jams and send big blocks of destructive ice thundering downstream. Restoring the river to its natural state is accomplished by deepening the channel and building floodplains that are like shoulders along the stream that give the river room to rise without causing property damage or erosion. The changes are made with strategically placed boulders and massive buried rootballs that direct the flow of the river and anchor its banks. To the casual observer, these elements of natural infrastructure are scarcely noticeable. These flood control measures "also give you the benefit of better habitat, aesthetics, and water quality," Tucker said.

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Initial East Branch restoration project is a go

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