As a century-old dam comes down, Danville residents wonder what it will mean for their river

Danville residents paused their Friday morning walks on the banks of the Dan River, despite the drizzling rain, to watch the demolition of a low-head dam that is more than a century old.

The Dan River now looks different than it has since 1894, when Dan River Mills built the dam to generate electricity for some of its buildings.

The city of Danville says the removal, which is expected to take a couple of months, will make the river safer and allow for certain amenities at an anticipated riverfront park.

But some residents — and some council members — are concerned about what the river will look like without the dam, which creates a waterfall-like effect and impacts the depth of the water.

The river “won’t be as pretty,” said resident Amanda Rose, who was walking along the riverwalk with Joe Rash on Friday morning, toting a wagon of fishing equipment. Rose and Rash said that they aren’t sure how the dam’s removal will affect their fishing, but that they’d soon find out.

A low-head dam is a structure built across a river, extending from bank to bank. The low-head dam that is scheduled for removal is one of several in the Dan River.

It is situated with the YMCA on one side and the Dan River Falls, now known as the White Mill project, on the other. It stands about 5 feet high and stretches about 1,150 feet across the river.

The Danville City Council approved the dam’s removal in 2022, after previously voting against its demolition in 2016.

Some permitting for the city’s riverfront park, which is under construction, is contingent on the dam’s removal, according to the city.

Taking out the dam will also make the river safer, Bill Sgrinia, Danville’s director of parks and recreation, said at an informational meeting about the city’s riverfront projects with the River District Association in 2023.

“Any low-head dam is inherently dangerous,” Sgrinia said.

Plus, the dam no longer serves any practical purpose, and hasn’t for many decades, said city manager Ken Larking.

Even when it was first built, the dam never created as much power as expected, said Danville historian Jonathan Travis Hackworth.

“It just wasn’t viable for any substantial amount of power,” he said. “So it’s really just been sitting there for 100 years.”

Larking said he can understand why some people are reluctant to see the dam, which has characterized the river for so long, removed.

Both recent estimates and historic accounts from before the dam was built can shed light on what the river might look like once it has been removed.

The decision to remove the dam

Federal regulations require that riverfront projects cause a net zero change to the river’s water level, Sgrinia said at the 2023 meeting.

“If you add something to the floodplain, you could potentially be creating flooding somewhere else,” he said. “There has to be some give and take there.”

One of the features of the riverfront park, which is scheduled to be complete by the end of the year, is a viewing pier that will extend out into the water.

Pylons will need to be built in the floodplain to support it, which means that the dam must come out, Sgrinia said.

Low-head dams are also known for the dangers they pose to boaters and swimmers.

“Water flowing over a drop forms a hole or hydraulic at the base, which can trap objects washing over the drop,” according to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. “Backwash or a recirculating current is formed below the dam.”

Someone who is swept over the dam will become trapped and forced underwater, according to DWR. And these dams are even more dangerous when they are not marked by signs or buoys, because they are hard to spot from upstream.

“Rescuing trapped individuals is dangerous and often unsuccessful,” according to DWR.

Five people have drowned at one of the several low-head dams in Danville since 1965; the most recent victims were a 5-year-old child in 2010 and a 76-year-old person in 2020.

Walter Anderson, who was watching the dam removal Friday morning with Billy Still, said that he thinks the demolition is a good idea.

“Several people have died, and it [the dam] wasn’t useful,” Anderson said, adding that he thinks the dam removal might even help flooding downriver.

Taking out the dam will also create ecological benefits, like allowing for natural sediment movement and reducing flooding and bank erosion, according to Larking’s recommendation for the dam’s demolition.

“[The dam] is hazardous and will be better for wildlife and the environment when it is removed,” he said in an email.

It took several months to get the design and permitting applications in place, and then the city put out bids for the demolition, Larking said. The bids came in higher than expected, he said, so the city planned to have public works crews handle the job.

Crews will take out small sections of the dam at a time, working from the top down until each entire section is removed, Larking said.

“The material will be removed from the site and likely reused in some way,” he said.

What will the river look like without the dam?

Mostly, residents have been concerned that the river will become very narrow and shallow, like a small creek, Sgrinia said.

“It will be more shallow, but our river is typically shallow,” he said. Depending on factors like rainfall, the river level near the dam varies from about 2 feet to 4 feet, he said.

“Our best guess is … that you’ll see more rocks exposed. It’ll look natural, the way it had always been prior to the dam,” he said.

Residents are also fond of the dam’s aesthetics. “I agree, it is pretty to see the water fall over,” Sgrinia said.

No one in Danville today was alive when the dam was built, so historic accounts of the river are useful to understand how it looked.

An 1870s report by the Army Corps of Engineers, provided by Hackworth, describes the stretch of river from just above Union Bridge down to where the former Worsham Bridge stood.

It was historically called the Great Falls area of the river, and this is where the dam stands today, Hackworth said.

“At the head of the falls the river is so thickly studded with rocks that it was difficult for the boat to pass,” the description reads.

The Great Falls area, which had a difference in land elevation of 18 feet moving downstream, was very similar to another nearby part of the river, called the Danville Shoal, Hackworth said.

“The Danville Shoal extended down from what we know as the walking trail bridge near the train station,” he said.

The Army Corps of Engineers described the shoal as a continuation of the Great Falls at a less abrupt descent, he said.

“If you want to know what the falls were like, just look at the shoal, which was a less precipitous descent,” Hackworth said. “The depth of the river at the shoal varied from three-quarters of an inch to a 4-foot pool of water. And there was a holey, rocky bottom.”

An 1821 annual report from the Board of Public Works to the General Assembly describes the northern part of the Great Falls area as passable in a canoe, according to records provided by Hackworth.

“There were also rocky islands that had trees on them and natural channels on the north side of the river,” Hackworth said.

City Councilman Lee Vogler referenced some of these historic reports during the 2022 meeting where the demolition was approved. Vogler voted against the removal of the dam, saying that there were “too many unknowns” about what would happen to the river without it.

He quoted the Army Corps of Engineers account about the depth of the river without the dam.

“In sections of it, it was less than an inch deep,” he said. “Even by [the city’s] own research, it says that there will be a large number of rocks exposed throughout that stretch of river.”

Vogler said he’d heard residents say that they’d like to be able to kayak on this part of the Dan River once the dam is removed.

“There’s going to be huge jagged rocks all through that stretch, and the water’s going to be anywhere from an inch to maybe a couple feet deep,” he said. “The notion of kayaking through there is a fantasy.”

The river will certainly look different once the dam is gone, Larking said.

“Rivers are also beautiful in a more natural state, and I am confident that will be true here,” he said. “Some people like the way it used to look, and some people will like the way it looks after removal. This dam no longer serves a useful purpose.”

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