The Threat of Dams on the Fox River

The Fox River was rated as the seventh most endangered river in America in April of 1999. There are many reasons for this. One threat is dams. Dams on the Fox River range in size from a couple of feet to nearly 30 feet high. Most of the 15 dams in Illinois on the Fox were built around the beginning of the 20th century. They were mainly used for power generating plants. Some dams were built by the first settlers in the area to run private wood, grain, and lumber mills.

These dams are bad for the Fox River in many ways. Environmentalists think that removing the dams will help the Fox. But if this were to happen, there would be flooding below the dams. Many homes and businesses have been built on the floodplain.

Dams can prevent some water animals, such as fish from going upstream or downstream. Above the dam, the flow of the River is almost completely stopped. This is bad because all of the chemicals and other pollution will settle into the water. Normally right where the pollutants enter the river is polluted, but then it eventually gets thinner and thinner until there is hardly anything left because of the flow of the river. It will then probably be washed away. But the dams stop the river flow above them. Dams also can be dangerous. At the bottom of the dams there is sort of a sideways whirlpool that not even the best of swimmers could escape from, called the hydraulic effect.

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