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Sheridan Engineering Company To Study Possible Removal Of Tongue River Diversion
Published
3 years agoon
A study is underway to see if a diversion in the Tongue River can be partially removed, completely removed, or to see if it’s better to leave it alone.
The Sheridan County Conservation District recently granted permission to WWC Engineering of Sheridan, to study and come up with plans and cost estimates on the diversion in the Tongue River, near the old Acme Power Plant.
The diversion was put in long ago to provide water to the power plant, but now that the plant is closed, there’s little to no need for it to stay in the river.
Conservation District Manager Carrie Rogaczewski says it will take a few months to complete the study, because it has to be determined what, if any environmental impact there will be.
“November is the target timeline to having the designs in hand to then start looking into funding for the actual whatever the proposed design is, whether that’s complete removal or modification somehow so that it’s not impacting fish migration and channel stability.”
The Power Plant was built back in 1910 and was closed in 1976, when management decided to not upgrade to meet EPA compliance.
Mitch Smith
July 21, 2021 at 3:06 pm
How much is the study? Taxpayers going to get hit hard on this i bet!
Erik Kulvinskas
July 21, 2021 at 3:15 pm
The river has been on its current course for decades thus creating its own ecosystem and feeding the surrounding area flora and fauna. To move it now just to ‘put it back’ would ruin that existing ecosystem. Unless there is some toxicity issues leaking from the plant, Just leave it, don’t spend money on the obvious.