New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
An inch of rain Monday has put the Suncook River into a low flood condition.
Wednesday 06/28/2006
The Suncook River continues to be this mysterious riddle out my home window. Just an inch of rain Monday has put the Suncook into a low flood condition with water once again partially flooding the corn field down back. Last Friday there were predictions of another 5 or more inches of rain here, but the system is dumping the rain just to the west of NH even today.
On my way back home Friday afternoon I stopped by the Buck Street dam in Pembroke to see why the river has been drawn down. Sure enough the dam gates were wide open dropping the river depth three feet at my house. This leaves the entire shore line exposed which is now a foot or more of quick-sand like mire from the deposited silt the entire length of the river. Even a dog has difficulty getting to the water and comes back muck covered. A quarter mile stretch of the Suncook River below the west branch of this dam has been de-watered leaving the mussels here too high and dry. I took a few minutes to walk this dry section and looked for the threatened brook floater mussels. Luckily I didn't spot any, but dozens of the common mussel lay exposed to the heat of the day. But clearly the brook floater mussels recovered up river can not be place here as they too would be threatened by the manipulation of this dams water levels.
I happened to run into one of the DES engineers when I stopped. He said the dam was lowered because of the huge tree laying against the dam. To make matters worse their excavator was broken and apparently they don't have the funds to fix it. So the river may remain in low water and very mucky condition for some time to come. It seems like the state itself is stuck in this mire. Last falls flooding took all the funds they had it seems with nothing left to fix or repair all the dams affected by this May's flooding here in the east. He was lowering the river even more due to the heavy rain predicted. In fact he said they had entirely removed the damaged gates at the Pittsfield dam that day. I drove past the Pittsfield dam Saturday to look for myself. The old rotting gates lay on the banking next to the dam. The pond above this dam was a huge mud flat as well. It seems like the entire Suncook River has suddenly turned into a huge mud bowl even above the breach.
The river is so different now. I had my little raft out onto the rain swollen river last evening with my wife and neighbors for an evening cruise. My 40 pound thrust electric motor could only barely move us up river. We cruised down to Ricks house mostly letting the swift current cast us four down the river. I most kept us out from the numerous fallen trees. There must be two dozen newly fallen tree in the river in the mile stretch between my house and his. It is so amazing what one hundred-year flood does to a river's edge. There are several places where 15 to maybe even 30 feet of the baking is now gone. Many trees will no doubt topple into the river very soon as they are leaning way over the river.
We turned to head back up river about 9:15 just as complete darkness fell on us. Although the tree frogs have moved on here at my house, a cut off back eddy down river was still full of their calling. Bats and fireflies darted about and a beaver crossed in the darkness just above us. Still we all noted how quiet it was on the river save for an occasional raven wail. The crescent moon hung in the sky to the west. And it warmed up during our trip. On the way down river the clouds were moving north to south. An hour later they were moving south to north. So one air mass, the high pressure out over the sea had been replaced by the low that had flooded the nations capitol and was now flooding NY. We were literally in the middle of it all and loving every minute of it! The sky was full of stars with Venus hanging like a crystal overhead as we finished our voyage at about 10:00 pm.
