The term “restoration” is used to refer to a range of goals and outcomes as it pertains to river projects. This term is typically used for restoring a river to its “natural” condition, or as close as is feasible by correcting the impairment or alteration to the river or watershed.
The project team fully recognizes that the complete restoration of natural rapids through downtown Grand Rapids is an unattainable goal. The term “restoration” as it has been applied by the project team to refer to the goals of this project is to move in the direction of restoring the natural condition and function of the river but working within the significant site constraints of an urbanized river with several bridge crossing, a fully developed floodplain, and a flood protection system vital to the City.
Due to the significant alteration of the river in the project reach, and how much infrastructure depends on the grade control provided by the low-head dams, simply removing the dams and allowing the river to establish new scour patterns and stable bed slope is not a recommended path towards restoration. Instead, the design has used the hydraulic features, located between bridge crossings, as a way to maintain this grade control and dissipate the river’s energy in a responsible way that emulates a natural river, in an urban setting.
The City of Grand Rapids and GRWW have embraced the need to improve the existing conditions of the river to not only provide increased opportunities for recreation and economic development, but to also restore the spirit of the iconic rapids that our city is named after and improve habitats and aquatic ecosystems to the greatest extent possible.
Striking a balance between restoration and revitalization is a challenging task, but one we have strived to do through extensive research of the river and consultation with regulatory agencies over the last decade. Input from these agencies has led to direct changes in the design that have reduced the amount of proposed fill material and reduced the number of purely recreational features in favor of increased fish passage and aquatic habitats.Though the last decade has presented many challenges and changes in direction, the proposed design represents something we are proud of and is better for the river and community as a whole.
While engineered wave features may not have historically occurred in this reach of the river, we can confidently show that the proposed Lower Reach project design improves the health of the river when compared to the existing conditions. The proposed design reduces significant public safety hazards, increases fish passage, diversifies and increases aquatic habitat for fish and endangered mussels, does not create additional flood concerns, and distributes the natural gradient of this river in a safe and responsible way that will provide significant socal, economic, and environmental benefits for the community to enjoy for generations to come.