# Connell: A glorious river beats a glorified ditch



## the rapids

http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20081116/OPINION02/811160316

The Port Huron area has a secret treasure, an asset we've exploited for more than 250 years without much appreciation for its true value.
I'm talking about the Black River or, if you prefer, La Riviere Noire.

If Lake Huron and the St. Clair River form Port Huron's front porch, then the Black River is its back door.
Going out that door led to the vast pinery that built the city, both literally with timber and figuratively with decades of prosperity. Port Huron's mills produced millions of board feet of lumber, and its ships carried those planks to ports across the Great Lakes.
The river was not only used, it was abused. For generations, it was an open sewer so fetid Port Huron residents kept their windows tightly shut even on the hottest August nights.
To this day it remains a glorified ditch carrying the runoff from hundreds of square miles of tiled fields and pastures.


Perhaps no one knows the Black River any better than Bob Haas, a fisheries biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
He lives near the river in Grant Township, and he has studied it from its headwaters in Minden Bog to its confluence with the St. Clair River at Vantage Point.
At the moment, he is completing work on the Black River Assessment, a detailed study of the waterway's past, present and potential. A draft report completed last summer ran to 72 pages, and the final report is likely to be even longer when it is issued this winter.
Readers will find it full of facts and figures covering not just the 73 miles of the main stream, but also the 118 miles of major tributaries.
Haas has some bad news. Runoff and erosion fill the river with silt and sediment. Dams block fish migration, keeping walleye and sturgeon from prime spawning grounds.
If the news seems dreary, then take heart. Optimism blares from many of his headlines.
Haas says water quality has improved dramatically in the past generation. Bald eagles once again ride the updrafts above the valley. Fish stocks are on the rise. Turtles, frogs, salamanders and waterfowl thrive.
The river, if not pristine, is cleansing itself year by year. Experts believe it could become a critical refuge for native mussels that are disappearing elsewhere in Michigan and southern Ontario.


The quivering ground of Minden Bog in northern Sanilac County is the birthplace not just of the Black River but also of the Cass River, which flows toward Saginaw Bay.
It is the only raised bog in Michigan, a unique habitat where layers of peat absorb water and release it begrudgingly.
The river, not much more than a trickle, emerges from the bog and flows south. It runs parallel to Lake Huron, coming to within three miles of the lake at Croswell.
The ridge that separates Croswell and Lexington is a glacial end moraine, the debris left at the edges of the two-mile-high glacier that scoured out the lake's basin.
About 10,000 years ago, the ice retreated and the first Indian hunters arrived in search of mastodon, megatherium and musk ox.
Their descendants would master the art of making birchbark canoes. They also found a portage between the Cass and Black rivers, creating an inland alternative to the more perilous waters of Lake Huron.
I once asked an Ojibwa scholar in Mount Pleasant to translate his tribe's name for the river. He told me it means Blackwater.
Blame the name on the bogs and swamps that once dotted the Thumb. Tannic acid from decaying vegetation stained the water.
For a time, French maps identified the waterway as Riviere Duluth - or Dulhut or Delude. It was named for Daniel Greysolon, whose formal title was Sieur du Lhut. He oversaw the building of a French fort in what is now Port Huron in 1687.
A century later, French settlers embraced the Ojibwa name. They began calling it Riviere Noire, or the Black River.
Today, it is one of at least five Black Rivers in Michigan.


How ironic that something so unique should carry such a common name.
Among the more unusual aspects of the river is the vegetation that borders it. Botanically, the Black River watershed is more similar to the Upper Peninsula than to much of southern Michigan.
A lake-influenced microclimate favors plants that prosper in cooler places. Great stands of Eastern hemlock, still found in the ravines of the Port Huron State Game Area, dominated the virgin forest of the river plain.
Michigan's timber industry has its roots in the Black River pinery, which furnished the lumber to rebuild Detroit after an 1805 inferno.
During the War of 1812, oak timbers and spars from the Black River were shipped to Lake Erie where they were used in building Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's fleet.
In the 1830s, lumber milled at Ruby built the villages that would become Milwaukee.


It's not only botany that makes the river unique. Haas says it is the only major river in Michigan that has been channelized.
The channel is found above Applegate. In the river's upper reaches, a ditch replaced natural meanders. The ditch is functional, but about as aesthetically pleasing as an appendectomy scar.
"They're just concerned with getting the water off the land as fast as possible without regard for what it means downstream," Haas says of the ditch diggers. "There's so much erosion going on, the river is full of silt."
The river returns to something close to its natural state in southern Sanilac County, where it moves into a valley carved by glacial melt water. At the county line, it flows through the moonscape of a sprawling surface mine producing gravel and sand.
In Grant and Clyde townships, the river twists through 16 miles of state game lands. It is handsome country, with high bluffs, shaded ravines and few signs of human habitation.
Northern rivers such as the Manistee and Au Sable, lined with second homes and vacation cabins, cannot match the Black River for a feeling of remoteness. As often as not, when I kayak through the game area I'll see more bald eagles and blue herons than human beings.


In Clyde Township, just above Beard Road, a large dam turns about four miles of the river into a lake.
Wingford Dam, once known as Ford Dam, was built in the 1930s on the hunting estate where industrialist Emory Ford entertained his customers.
"It may be the only dam in Michigan built to create a duck pond," Haas says.
Today, the old Ford estate is called Wingford Farms. It is owned by Ralph Scofield, a conscientious and capable man. He has been a good steward of what may be the most spectacular large tract of private property in St. Clair County, if not in all of southeastern Michigan.


Haas hopes the Wingford and Croswell dam eventually can be removed, which would allow fish to spawn upstream.
With only two dams, the Black River flows much more freely than similar-sized rivers in the region. Haas says there are 96 dams on the Huron River, 79 on the Clinton and 62 on the Rouge.
Pioneer settlers told of scooping fish from the Black River with their bare hands. They may have been exaggerating, but the fishery does have exciting potential.
Haas says biologists have observed 89 species of fish in the river. There is decent fishing today for warm-water species such as bass and channel catfish.


Haas closes his report with a summary of options for restoring the river to something close to its original splendor.
He would remove the dams and restore the meanders. He talks of new and smarter ways of diverting runoff into natural wetlands and retention basins. He would make the river more accessible to canoeists and kayakers. He would work with property owners to obtain riverbank easements for anglers.
Most of all, he would change public attitudes.
People should recognize the river as one of southeastern Michigan's best-kept secrets, a regional treasure.
They need a vision of how the river could be restored with an eye toward wildlife, recreation, tourism and simple God-given beauty. They also need to elect drain commissioners and other public officials who share that vision.
It has been a damn fine ditch long enough. It is time to let it be a river again.

*Mike Connell is a freelance writer and a former Times Herald reporter. Contact him at [email protected].*


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## creek trekker

79 dams on the Clinton.....:SHOCKED:


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## stinger63

> Today, the old Ford estate is called Wingford Farms. It is owned by Ralph Scofield, a conscientious and capable man.


Also a man that has paid security to watch over every inch of this land especialy among the area by the old Ford Dam.Access is only restricted by the few willing to treck the obsticle course in the water to get to it.


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## wanderboy

stinger63 said:


> Also a man that has paid security to watch over every inch of this land especialy among the area by the old Ford Dam.Access is only restricted by the few willing to treck the obsticle course in the water to get to it.


Is this place any good with fishing? right off the dam?


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## back2spool

Thanks for sharing....

I am going to print this off and read it again.

That State Game Area sounds cool...


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## jnpcook

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

John


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## stinger63

I have hiked some of the backwood areas in the state game area its rough terrain to say the lease.Access into this area is limited to 3 areas,1 is fairly accessable of the 136 bridge that crosses the river where a couple from Port huron was caught recently dropping news paper machines into the river.The st clair county dive team are suppose to recover the machines out of the water if they havent done so already.Sorry about my babbling LOL.The other 2 areas are a considerable long walk to the river.Even wading up to this dam can be a treacherous adventure.If wading up to the dam you must stay in the water at all times to fish there.Like I said people are always constantly watching to make sure anglers stay in the water.The article mentions 84 different species of fish well I personaly have counted a number far less than that number closer to 8-10 not the 84 as the article mentions.Anyways I was starting to explore some of these areas along the river this fall quite heavily until the cold came.I also recently took a canoe with one of my buddys help and went exploring different sections of the river and hope to do some more hopefully soon 
Aaron


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## ESOX

> The article mentions 84 different species of fish well I personaly have counted a number far less than that number closer to 8-10 not the 84 as the article mentions.


I have caught 16 species out of the Black on flies and bait. That doesn't even begin to cover all the species of minnows etc. that I have seen there. The bottomlands of the Black offer some of the best bird watching in the SE too.


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## stinger63

I have been through Croswell a number of times and never have seen a dam near there on the black river,anyone else seen it?


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## ESOX

If I recall correctly it's just upstream from Peck Road (90) and below the swinging bridge.


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## WILDCATWICK

You're correct Esox. They also need to do something about the holding ponds that from Pioneer Sugar that goes into the Black. That area is just disgusting. I have fished in the Croswell area several times. Bass and pike are plentiful but access to good water is almost non existent. I did manage to find some riffles with some nice holes below them.

I don't know that it is a river that can ever be brought back. Fred Fuller, the former drain commissioner, barely was able to keep section below Wingford from going to hell. There needs to be more articles and more attention to how a more natural river could benefit the community.

That area around Beard Hills was destroyed back in the 1800's with logging and just a total disregard for the unique environment. They shot out all the elk and took most of the trees. 

Certain parts of the Mill does remind me of being back in the U.P.. Nice cliffs and some huge virgin pines. I don't think there is any doubt that the Black and it's tribs could be great fisheries if they minimized the silt and runoff. But there are so many farms in the area that I just don't see the battle being won.

Thanks for posting that article. I got to work with Mike for awhile. He is a rebel and speaks his peace. He certainly did it again!


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