Neversink River In Catskills Flowing Free After Dam Demolition

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NEW YORK — "By the banks of the birthplace of American fly-fishing, backhoes are demolishing a dam that for nearly a century has blocked the easy flow of the Neversink River.

The Cuddebackville dam in the Catskills is being pulled down by the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a $2.2-million project that is among dozens of dam demolition efforts underway this year across the country. The Corps of Engineers, long the nation's preeminent dam-builder, is learning to become its dam-eradicator also.

Never before has any dam in New York state been demolished solely for sake of the environment. In the muddy aftermath of hurricane-related flooding last week, which swelled the Neversink flow to 50 times normal, a construction crew continued to dismantle the low-lying, 107-foot dam. A third of it has been torn down so far.

Already, the fish are swimming freely. "We have the dam breached; we have fish past the dam for the first time," in decades said aquatic ecologist Colin Apse at the Conservancy's Neversink River project office. The Cuddebackville dam is among 60 being torn down this year in 14 states, including California, as part of a growing movement to clear rivers of defunct barriers, according to American Rivers, an environmental group in Washington, D.C."

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