Keep the Marianna dam
I wonder if I should apologize for writing in support of keeping Marianna dam.
I didn’t realize that four people drowned there in the last 70 years. The local heroin problem really pales in comparison, doesn’t it? There are public swimming pools with lifeguards that have had four drownings in 70 years.
You folks at the Observer-Reporter surprise me. You commendably advocate people taking ownership of their communities, and then you don’t support the Marianna sportsmen for doing just that. Does Marianna really need blatant fear-mongering to take over its decision-making process? If the dam is so dangerous and potentially catastrophic, why is Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection willing to allow the dam to continue to exist penalty-free? Safety takes priority with those folks.
And, concerning fish migration, how are fish from the Monongahela River supposed to jump over the concrete dam north of Clarksville to get to the Marianna dam, which is a considerable distance upstream of the Clarksville dam? Also, why does all this “engineering” discussion about having either a dam or a road ignore the 1000-pound gorilla in the room, namely a huge, nearly perpendicular slope extending from the creek bed, going under the road, and terminating hundreds of feet above the road in what is arguably the hydraulic slide capital of the United States? That road is going to require periodic repair whether you have a creek, a lake or a goat trail at the bottom of a slope like that.
I applaud state Rep. Bud Cook for recognizing the potential inherent in keeping a water supply intact. If the kayak community and the American Rivers group want to take out a dam on Ten Mile, then take out the one above Clarksville. Do that and a kayak can be put in the creek right below the Marianna dam and floated nonstop all the way to New Orleans.
American Rivers also needs to know that the Monongahela River, with its deteriorating locks and dams and enormous potential as a critical American unit of infrastructure, desperately needs saving. Leave Ten Mile Creek to the folks who live along its banks and the sportsmen who know it for what it really is.
Martin A. Niverth
Marianna