Demolition of Estabrook Park dam on Milwaukee River begins after years of contention

Demolition of the 81-year-old Estabrook Park dam on the Milwaukee River is underway.

After more than 10 years of anger-filled disputes over repairing or removing the deteriorated dam — and repeated hearings in Milwaukee County courtrooms and meeting rooms — a contractor has started razing a section of the dam closest to the south shore of the river.

Major demolition is scheduled for March.

Even so, Mark Crawford does not plan to take down an aging sign anytime soon. The sign on his shoreline property two miles north says: "Tear down Estabrook dam. Free the Milwaukee River."

"I've always been a fan of any river," Crawford said. "The rivers that are left alone are the most beautiful. With a dam, that's a fake river."

Crawford said some of his Glendale neighbors wanted the public to pay for renovating the dam so that it could be closed again and back up water to form a shallow artificial pond.

"They want the dam for their pontoon boats," he said.

While motor boating was an objective for some of those property owners upstream of the dam, a small group had gone to court to assert that loss of the artificial pond would drop their property values and leave them with private piers and seawalls far from the water.

County Board Chairman Theodore Lipscomb Sr. lives in Glendale near that group of riverfront residents and he was their longtime courthouse champion in favor of renovating the dam at public expense to prevent such costly effects on private property.

Some residents remain fearful of what will happen to their shorelines and whether any public agency will foot part of the bill for landscaping, removing nuisance, invasive weeds and other work, he said Friday.

Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy said the city is seeking grants from both federal government agencies and private foundations to help property owners pay for removing docks, boat houses and seawalls.  

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There are three pieces to the dam.

In addition to a dam with floodgates extending from the north bank of the river in Estabrook Park to an island at midstream, a serpentine concrete and stone wall, known as a fixed crest spillway, extends from the island to the south bank of the river. A series of concrete ice barriers are located upstream of the dam section with floodgates.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's commission in December awarded an $844,421 demolition contract to Terra Engineering & Construction Corp. of Madison.

The ice barriers will be removed Feb. 27 and 28, weather permitting, said Jeremy Triebenbach, senior project manager with MMSD.

Demolition of the dam with floodgates and spillway will be done in March.

On Friday, a Terra employee used an excavator to pound apart the southernmost piece of the spillway.

Rubble from this short section of the concrete and stone wall will be left on the riverbed for now to create a temporary ramp for equipment used in demolition, Triebenbach said.

MMSD has received a total of $2.3 million in grants that will fully pay for dam removal, MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer said.

In addition to demolition work, the district estimates it will spend $1 million on engineering design, post-demolition restoration of the river banks at the dam site, and removal of a temporary access road on the south shoreline.

A previous dam restoration plan favored by Lipscomb would have repaired the structure and added upgrades, including a fish passage around the dam, at an estimated cost of $4.1 million.

Operating and maintaining the dam would have cost an additional $160,000 a year, or $3.2 million over 20 years, under the proposal.

Demolition is the least costly alternative for county residents, according to Shafer and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele.

The 1937-era dam has not operated since 2008 when the DNR ordered then-owner Milwaukee County to open the gates after inspections found numerous safety problems and confirmed the need for extensive repairs. The upstream impoundment was drained at that time.

In 2009, the DNR ordered the county to remove or repair the dam.

Removing the dam will lower the floodplain by as much as one foot in some upstream locations, according to MMSD officials. More than 50 homes will be shifted outside of revised floodplain maps and most of those residences are in Glendale.

Benefits of dam removal, from better water quality to the return of aquatic plants, already have started since the gates were open in 2008, according to Will Wawrzyn, an MMSD consultant and retired state Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologist.

Cheryl Nenn, with the Milwaukee Riverkeeper organization, has advocated for the dam removal since 2008.

"The dam was detrimental to the health of the river," Nenn said. The shallow pond held back by the dam was murky with suspended dirt and it would heat up in summer, said Nenn. Oxygen levels were too low to sustain most fish.

Carp and bullhead were dominant in the impoundment because they were tolerant of the degraded water quality and habitat there, Wawrzyn said.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper sued the county in 2011 for failure to operate and maintain the dam in good working condition. In 2012, a circuit court judge declared the dam a public nuisance.

After years of inaction by the county, the Milwaukee Common Council in November 2016 rezoned county property on the north side of the dam as non-park land. Abele then sold the parcel to MMSD for the purpose of demolishing the dam structures.

All property will be returned to the county for park use after the dam is removed.