Robert Street dam scheduled to be demolished

[AndyS]

Another Raritan River dam is going to be demolished this summer.

Removal of the Robert Street dam upstream from Raritan Borough will come about a year after the Calco Dam in Bound Brook was taken down. The Raritan and its tributaries form the state’s largest interior watershed that can support fish that migrate from the ocean to spawn.

Shad and stripers have been caught this year at the Robert Street dam, but shad get up there only when high water lets them swim over Raritan’s Nevius Street dam, known locally as “the falls,” smallest of the three remaining area dams. Shad can jump when hooked, but don’t leap over falls or dams.

Once the Robert Street dam is gone, a fishway could be built at the Nevius dam in Raritan to make it even easier for shad and striped bass to get as far upstream as the Headgates dam at the far end of Duke Island Park, if there are funds and the state agrees.

Instead of dumping 15,000 eight-inch hatchery browns into the Manasquan River everywhere fall in hopes some go to the ocean and return, perhaps the Division of Fish and Wildlife could try putting them into the Raritan to see if an anadromous fishery could be created by stocking there where many could enjoy them.

Students from Rutgers already tag Raritan shad in Bound Brook during the spring to learn more about shad in the river. They might be able to do the same with brown trout, hundreds of thousands of which have been put into the Manasquan without many caught years later.

Funding for the dam removal came by the Department of Environmental Protection’s securing money from federal Natural Resource Damage settlements made by polluting companies sued for ecological restoration projects in the watershed where the damages occurred. Polluters pay, not fishermen or other taxpayers.

John W. Jengo, Dam Removal Project manager for last July’s Calco dam project and this summer’s job, said the starting date at Robert Street is dependent upon river flow and weather, as well as logistical issues, including getting removal equipment to the dam, which has no direct road access.

More than 70 years ago, the original small Robert Street dam was broken in the middle and sides, so water was fairly shallow on both sides. It had been built early in the last century to funnel water to what we used to call “the dead river,” which is about as wide as the Raritan Canal and re-enters the main river several hundred yards above the Nevius dam.

The Robert Street dam is a hike along a macadam walkway from the parking lot off Old York Road into Duke Island Park, was rebuilt in 1964, ostensibly to create recreational boating, but instead created a boating hazard. Duke Farms property is on the river’s south side where the silted-shallow dead river goes.
Written by
Jim Stabile

[AndyS]

Looks like it may have been moved back to August 1st.