Friday, August 29, 2008

With the Merrimack Dam gone, the Souhegan River has changed






souhegan-up-river-20080829-pano.jpg, originally uploaded by marcn.



This morning I walked down to the Souhegan from behind the High School's baseball field and was surprised by just how much lower the river was!

Here is a slide show of some of the photos I took from the section of the river above the former dam to near where it crosses under Route 3.



Souhegan River, post Merrimack Dam (as a Slideshow)




I recommend folks to take the fairly easy walk down and check it out yourself.

Eric Hutchins of NOAA Restoration Center and some other folks from NHDES Dam Bureau as well as some Boston College students taking some location measurements today. Just where the river bed will end up is still unclear until we have a few seasonal floods. The two little islands are no longer islands (see the Google Map of the area) and sit on a 4" high sandy area. Looking down in the water you can see a much of sand moving, so there will be lots of change there. The nice thing is most places are shallow, rocky and calm enough to just walk across the river. The water level up beyond the highway through to Wildcat Falls are unchanged.