- Division of Marine Fisheries
River herring have waited a long time to swim up the Three Mile River in the Taunton River Watershed. With the completion of a new fish ladder at the Draka Dam on the Taunton and Dighton border, they will finally get their chance next spring.
The Draka Dam, also called the 620 Spring Street Dam, was built to provide hydropower for the surrounding mill industries in the 1800s. The dam impounds the 45-acre Mount Hope Pond and eliminated upstream passage for sea-run fish to the pond and for several miles upstream in the Three Mile River.
Interest to restore passage for diadromous fish goes back over 30 years. The Boyden Wildlife Refuge runs along the pond and has become a popular location for walking and viewing wildlife. The attraction of the Refuge and use of the pond as a fire suppression water supply by the dam owner has reduced the potential to remove the dam. The goal of restoring river herring and other species in an important tributary of the Taunton River led to the fish ladder project at the long-impassible dam.
The project had more than its fair share of challenges. Formal efforts began in 1997 with DMF and Save the Bay partnering to gather funds for fishway design and permitting. The project stalled for a time due to the complexity of property issues: the dam was owned by one company, the river bank next to the fish ladder was owned by a trust, and the site access was owned by yet another company. Once agreements were made on property issues, the design and permitting work was resumed with continued support from Save the Bay, the Town of Dighton, and the City of Taunton. However, cost increases to the design and permitting required additional funding.
With the receipt of essential awards from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, and the Department of Fish and Game’s In-Lieu Fee Program, and DMF’s own contribution of fish ladder sections, the construction project was ready to forge ahead in 2018. Unfortunately, high river flows shut down the fishway’s construction that year. Finally, in the fall of 2019, SumCo Ecoengineering, under contract with DMF, completed the construction and river flow was released through the new fishway. The construction contract was just under $90,000, a reasonable sum for the benefits gained.
The fishway was cooperatively designed by Tibbetts Engineering, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and DMF. It includes an aluminum Alaskan Steeppass fish ladder, a concrete-formed entrance box, turnpool and exit box integrated with a notch in the dam crest. A second notch in the dam provides a soft landing for juvenile river herring and other fish leaving the pond into a plunge pool. Flows from the downstream migration channel lead to the entrance box to provide additional attraction flows.
We hope to see fish passing over the dam this spring for the first time in well over a hundred years. DMF has been stocking herring in Mount Hope Pond the last few years to prime the spawning migration. We’ll never know exactly how the fish feel about the completion of this 20+ year project, but we can expect excitement and a sense of relief from local advocates and project partners when the fish start their run.
By Brad Chase, Diadromous Fisheries Project Leader
