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As climate change threatens to warm Michigan rivers, dam removal can drive temperatures down by several degrees overnight. An influx of state and federal money has boosted removal efforts, but advocates say more is needed.
Mid-Michigan lawmakers urgently introduced a slate of bills to better fund and regulate Michigan’s aging dams. But more than two years after the Midland disaster, the reforms have yet to receive a hearing.
“This is a ticking time bomb,” said Marc Gaden, spokesperson for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a U.S-Canadian fishery management entity that is leading the project and is a party to the lawsuit. “The city needs to know, one way or another, how to proceed.” FishPass is the capstone to a decades-long effort to restore fish habitat on the Boardman River, which flows through Traverse City. After three dam removals upstream, city leaders had planned to replace the last remaining dam on the Boardman — an old mill dam in downtown Traverse City — with a new barrier. That barrier wou...