FishPass

Big thanks to our partners at The City of Traverse City for all that you do for FishPass, and the River, and our community!

Art Kreuger, director of utilities for Traverse City, credited the FishPass infrastructure project with helping handle the extreme water flow, while the old Union Street dam may have failed entirely.

“We could have had initially upstream flooding because the water couldn’t get through — but if it would have failed, it probably would have just been a wall of water going through town, and the damage would have been astronomical,” he said.

Kreuger says that close to $30 million invested into the FishPass project from the state and federal governments likely helped avoid threats to human life and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

Learn more at 9and10news.com.

“An engineering analysis indicated the old dam could have been overtopped in April, with the potential of structural failure and “uncontrolled flooding of Boardman Lake into downtown,” according to the city. The $25-million plus investment in FishPass “prevented threats to human life and hundreds of millions (in) property damage downtown,” staff said.”
-check out today’s Traverse City Ticker for the full story.

Weathering the Storm: City Measures Infrastructure Impacts from Flooding In 2023, the City of Traverse City upgraded a a sewer line in the 100 block alley of Front Street and moved it south – away from its vulnerable location along the Boardman River wall. That project may have single-handedly prevented 1.5 million gallons of raw sewage from discharging daily into the ...