Little Gunpowder

Overview

In the 1960s a 60 foot-wide, 6 foot-tall, concrete dam was constructed on the Iittle Gunpowder, which is the border between Harford and Baltimore County. The dam was built to power a water pump that provided irrigation to support farming operations on the property.

Ecotone utilized a 50,000-pound tracked excavator and a 10,000-pound hydraulic hammer. The existing concrete was notched incrementally to decrease the backwater at a controllable rate. When the backwater was sufficiently drained, the dam was slowly broken down into pieces able to be handled by the excavator. The project was performed “in the wet” during the summer months outside of the spawning for many important aquatic species. Check out this time lapse video of the demolition video.

Highlights

• Dam Removal opened miles of river and tributaries anadromous fish species, as no other blockages are found downstream of the removed dam
• This was the last dam still remaining in the Little Gunpowder watershed

– PROJECT PHOTO –