Grand Rapids Whitewater

East Side Gets It.

Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by Chip Richards in Whitewater

As reported by the Saginaw News, Chesaning MI is getting whitewater as you read this.  

A $1.3 million improvement project on the Shiawassee River in Chesaning could lure kayakers and walleye. In the meantime, the work is attracting spectators.

“This is going to be great for fishing,” said Tithof, who has 11 grandchildren. “We all fish here. Everybody brings their grandkids down here.”

Dick Tithof, 64, of Chesaning Township rode a bicycle around town on a recent day, watching a bulldozer, excavator and other machines place rocks in the river.

In place of the 1850s-era, 9-foot-high dam — breached several times in the past few years and removed this month — workers are building a 300-foot-long “rock ramp” that descends 3 feet for every 100 feet of river, said engineer Michael G. Nielsen, manager of the project for Wade Trim Inc. in Bay County’s Monitor Township.

“One of the biggest reasons we were able to get the grant funding that we did is that we’re opening up 37 miles of fish habitat previously unavailable because fish could not get up river beyond that dam in Chesaning,” Nielsen said.
Chris Fryer | The Saginaw NewsOnlookers gather on the wooden overlook in the Riverboat Playground at Cole Park on the banks of the Shiawassee River in Chesaning to watch construction crews build a rock rapids.

David J. Szybala, 35, of Chesaning photographed the heavy equipment at work.

“I’ve been taking photos every day they’ve been working in the river, just to have a historical record of what they’re doing and how it’s progressing,” Szybala said. “To me, this is history because that dam had stood there for more than 100 years. Now this is here, and this will probably outlast my lifetime.”

Several grants, including $900,000 from the state, have paid for most of the cost of this month’s river improvement project, taking place north of the M-57 bridge over the Shiawassee River.

“This rock ramp is being designed to allow the passage of fish, including targeted species that are traditionally poor swimmers, such as walleye and lake sturgeon,” Nielsen said.

About 35 donors have given about 6,000 cubic yards of rocks to help form the river habitat, said project volunteer Tom Meder, 62, of Shiawassee County’s New Haven Township.

This week, Sandy Verry of Grand Rapids, Minn.-based Ellen River Partners — which designed the river terrain — worked with excavator operator Aaron VandenBos of Pete’s Contracting Inc. of Falmouth to place boulders and rocks.

“We’re building a rock ramp in the water, and then we’re building weirs across it to turn it into a rapids that fish can get up and canoeists can get down by traveling through the center of it,” said Pete’s Contracting owner Pete VandenBos.