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dam-l France: more flying dams..SECOND DAM DEMOLISHED FOR SALMON
06.11.98: LOIRE BASIN (France) : More flying dams.. !
SECOND DAM DEMOLISHED FOR SALMON
(Photos will be avaiabel very soon on this webpage !)
The Vienne river, the second most important tributary of the Loire river after the Allier,
is flowing freely again in the area where it was blocked by the Maisons-Rouges dam.
The demolition of this 3,80 meter-high and 60 m long dam is indeed almost over and
the Vienne has regained the level it had before the dam was built in 1923.
Salmon "Salmo salar" http://www.rivernet.org/saumo1_e.htm and other migratory fish
such as eels and shads will again be able to swim upriver and reach their former
spawning grounds on the Vienne river basin, which represents a fifth of the whole Loire basin.
The works, which were decided as part of « the Plan Loire Grandeur Nature »
( http://www.rivernet.org/plgn.htm) in January 1994 inspired by the campaign led by the
Loire Vivante network, were launched in the middle of June 1998, after a few years of
conflicts due to local political opposition. The destruction of the right part of the dam allowed
the reservoir to be emptied and the river to flow freely ; it was finished in mid-September.
The demolition of the rest of the dam - its left part, consisting in various inefficient fishladders
and the hydroelectric buildings - will be over at the end of the year.
End of September, a program for the restoration of the riverbanks was launched,
which required 45,000 m3 of backfill and 7,500 tons of rocks. This will be followed
by a phase of plantation which will give their natural character back to the banks.
The works, amounting to FF10 million (about $1.6 million), have been supervized by
EDF (the French state-owned electricity utility), as was the case with the demolition
of the 18 m high Saint-Etienne-du-Vigan dam ( http://www.rivernet.org/stedvig.htm )
on the Upper Allier, which has also been dismantled as part of the salmon restoration
program of the « Plan Loire Grandeur Nature ». The same amount will be spent on
measures meant to replace professional taxes formerly paid by EDF.
Blueprints for economic, touristic or environmental development projects
have been formulated, but no decision has been taken yet.
This operation should enable salmon and other migratory fish to come back on
the Vienne river and its tributaries. At the end of the XIXth century, salmon had
about 800 hectares of spawning grounds on the Vienne basin.
The 365-km-long Vienne has tributaries which are ideal for
salmon, notably the Creuse which itself receives the Gartempe.
An important salmon restoration program was launched on the Gartempe in 1975,
but it has had very few positive results because of the inefficiency of the
Maisons-Rouges fishladders.
The demolition of the Maisons-Rouges dam, together with that of the
Saint-Etienne-du-Vigan dam, the construction of an efficient fishladder on the
Vichy dam and the efforts undertaken to improve other small obstacles to
salmon migration, indicate the program to save the Loire and
Allier salmon is under way. However, the species will be saved only
when the salmon hatchery programmed on the Upper Allier, which is several
years late, is built. In 1997, only 389 salmon were counted on the middle Allier river,
the sole tributary of the Loire were salmon still returned to spawn before
Maisons-Rouges was destroyed.
* Rate used : 1 $ = 6 FF
for more information contact:
<bold><bigger>Roberto A. EPPLE
</bigger></bold>Executive Director, ERN-European Rivers Network
e-mail : ern@rivernet.org website: http://www.rivernet.org
<italic><underline>Main & Westeuropean Office:
</underline></italic>8 Rue Crozatier, 43000 Le Puy, France
Tel +33 (0) 471 02 08 14 Fax +33 (0) 471 02 60 99
<italic><underline>North-European Office:
</underline></italic>Poststrasse 7 c/o Projekt Lebendige Elbe, DUH
D - 06366 Koethen, Deutschland
Tel +49 (0) 3496 21 00 09 Fax +49 (0) 3496 21 00 08