Associated Press & Ron Brown
 
April 7, 2009
 
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Within weeks, workers with jackhammers will begin turning the 88-year-old Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River into rubble, giving fish free passage.
 
Water is draining from the reservoir behind the dam, in preparation for the first stage of removal. Contractors also began dumping loads of rock on the north bank of the river. The rock will create a coffer dam around the north end of the dam. It will keep fish from swimming over the dam for the next three weeks, but after that salmon and steelhead will be able to swim freely past the site, as they did before the dam was built in 1921.
 
"We think that when the coffer dam is constructed, just as quickly as possible, the reservoir will be raised again. The ladder will be watered and the fish will then proceed upstream," says ODFW Fish Biologist Dan Van Dyke.
 
Workers with Slayden Construction were in the fish ladders Tuesday morning as the water receded, netting stranded fish and returning them to the river.