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On Feb. 18, Sen. John Warner hopes to be celebrating his 77th birthday with a bang in Fredericksburg.
Virginia's senior senator, an outdoorsman, fisherman and the longest-serving Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, is expected to be in town to help cheer when soldiers blast a hole in the deteriorating Embrey Dam.
Warner has been a longtime advocate of breaching the structure off Fall Hill Avenue to open the upper Rappahannock River to migratory fish . The dam, built to provide electric power and now obsolete, has a fish passage that doesn't work.
During an August 1999 visit here to push for funding for the dam-removal project, Warner remarked that it couldn't happen soon enough for him. He joked at the time that Embrey Dam could be renamed after him--then promptly blown up.
Warner said yesterday through a spokesman, "I'm looking forward to this long-awaited event that will remove the last impediment to a free-flowing Rappahannock and bring with it improved spawning for shad and rockfish and improve the environment in central Virginia."
With Embrey Dam gone, there will be no obstacles on the river from its source at Chester Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, 184 miles to its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay.
Warner will be among a host of dignitaries expected to be on hand, and he won't be the only one celebrating. Bringing down the dam has been a decade-long quest by area environmental groups such as Friends of the Rappahannock.
The $10 million project is being done in phases by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Early this year the agency awarded a contract for the removal of a vast shoal of sediment behind the dam that reaches nearly to the Interstate 95 bridge. That part of the job should be finished by Woodside Construction Corp. in mid-January.
In addition, a smaller 19th-century wooden crib dam 25 feet upstream from Embrey Dam is being partially dismantled to allow backed-up water to drain when Embrey Dam is breached.
Brian Rheinhart, the corps' project manager, says plans for the rather unusual event are coming together.
An Air Force Reserve unit, the 555 Red Horse out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and the 7th Transportation Group Dive Company, an active Army unit from Fort Eustis, will do the demolition work. It's part of the Defense Department's Innovative Readiness Training Program for reserves to hone their skills.
The two units will meet at the dam Dec. 12 to go over final details.
Rheinhart said they'll probably use C4, a plastic explosive, to bring down a 100-foot section of Embrey Dam near the Fredericksburg shore. Charges will be placed on the concrete buttresses on the downstream side, which support the structure, and underneath.
"They're designing that now and estimating the amount of explosives they'll use," Rheinhart said.
As for the explosion itself, it's not likely to be anything spectacular--for obvious reasons. Fredericksburg's big bang will be a controlled explosion to do the job without affecting spectators, nearby houses or property.
A real blast
Will there be much of a boom?
"Oh, yes," Rheinhart said. "People will hear it." Vibration-monitoring equipment, and probably remote cameras to capture the scene, will be stationed nearby.
"We don't expect any problems," Rheinhart said. Nevertheless, "You're always going to ruffle some feathers with this type of operation." Still to be determined is the size of the restricted zone around the blast site.
Fredericksburg officials will be handling the logistical details for the public event, which may include a ribbon-cutting, speeches and the like.
"We've held one brainstorming session; another is scheduled," said Doug Fawcett, Fredericksburg's director of public works.
Public safety will be part of the city's job, based on what the corps and the demolition crews require.
Because the dam is on a narrow, heavily wooded section of the river, viewing the blast may be a challenge.
"There's no flat field where you can say, 'Everybody come here,'" Fawcett noted. "Even if the restricted area is small, there's not an obvious good site where people can stand and see the dam."
City police and Stafford sheriff's deputies will enforce any setback requirements; fire and rescue workers will be on hand if there is any mishap. Though Embrey Dam is owned by Fredericksburg, the river itself is in Stafford.
Safety concerns
An overriding consideration, Fawcett said, is the safety of residents on that stretch of Fall Hill Avenue and in nearby Normandy Village.
With any explosives, "People tend to be alarmist," Fawcett said. So the city intends to get the word out by early next month about exactly what will be happening and when, along with what safeguards will be in place.
"Part of our challenge is protecting people from themselves," he added, such as anyone tempted to put a boat in the river for a better view, or to ride the crest of water released by the breach. A ¾-mile-long section of the river above the dam is already off-limits to public use because of the ongoing dredging operation.
Rheinhart said the dam would continue to be off-limits for some time after the demolition.
"We're not going to want anybody in the river. There will be some dangerous stuff" remaining when the dam section crumbles, Rheinhart said.
The river level downstream from the dam will temporarily rise a couple of feet until the pool backed up behind the dam drains.
"We've looked at that. It's not going to be a 10- or 15-foot-high wall of water. It'll just be a couple of feet, and it's not going to cause any flooding or damage," Rheinhart said. River flow at the time also will be a factor.
Still, canoes and kayaks "should stay away" until the removal of the dam is complete sometime in late 2005 or early 2006, he said.
The rest of Embrey Dam will be dismantled beginning in July. The remaining crib dam will also be removed, but not before it is studied by archaeologists.
According to American Rivers, a national conservation group based in Washington, 57 dams in 15 states and the District of Columbia are scheduled for removal this year for ecological or safety reasons.
There are approximately 100,000 dams in the U.S.; 1,000 of them are in Virginia.
To reach RUSTY DENNEN: 540/374-5431 rdennen@freelancestar.com
