Judge to hear arguments over fish passage at Conowingo Dam

"Conflicts over fish passage date to the early 1800s, as canal companies began building dams along the river and its tributaries. Of particular concern was a wood-and-stone dam built in the 1830s near Columbia, PA, just 45 miles upstream from the Bay.

Complaints about its impact on shad spurred the Pennsylvania legislature to pass a law in 1866 requiring fishways at dams. But the fishways at that time proved largely ineffective. Some fish still managed to get upstream. The canal dams were relatively low, and some shad made it upstream as dams were breeched by ice flows or inundated by high springtime river flows."

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http://www.bayjournal.com/article/judge_to_hear_arguments_over_fish_passage_at_conowingo_dam