Text / Riverbed-Sediment Mapping in the Edwards Dam Impoundment on the Kennebec River, Maine ...

Riverbed-Sediment Mapping in the Edwards Dam Impoundment on the Kennebec River, Maine By Use of Geophysical Techniques

Click here to view text. May contain additional pages.

Get Citation

Have a question about this item?

Contact Owner

Item information.

Title: Riverbed-Sediment Mapping in the Edwards Dam Impoundment on the Kennebec River, Maine By Use of Geophysical Techniques
Creator: Robert W. Dudley
USGS
Date Created and/or Issued: ~2000
Contributing Institution: UC Riverside, Library, Water Resources Collections and Archives
Collection: Clearinghouse for Dam Removal Information (CDRI)
Rights Information: Copyrighted
Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Description: Scope/Content: Abstract: In July 1997, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement recommending that the 162-year-old Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine, be removed. The impoundment formed by Edwards Dam extends about 15 mi to the city of Water- ville, near the confluence of the Sebasticook River with the Kennebec River. The impoundment has a surface area of 1,143 acres, a gross storage of approximately 740 million ft3, and a usable storage of about 184million ft3 (Stone and Webster, 1995a). According to FERC, removal of the 917-ft-long, 24-ft-high timber crib and concrete structure would restore 15 mi of riverine habitat, improve passage of ocean-migrating fish species native to the Kennebec River, and result in substantial recreational enhancements (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 1997). Because the removal of Edwards Dam would change the hydraulic characteristics of the river in the present-day impoundment, the potential transport of erodible, fine-grained sediment currently in the impoundment is a concern. Of particular concern is the erosion and transport of this sediment to areas down- stream from the dam, a process that could introduce possible bacterial and chemical contamination and could impede river navigation as a result of sediment deposition. In an effort to build upon available information on the composition of the riverbed, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Maine State Planning Office, classified riverbed sediment types and mapped their areal extents in the lower (southern) half of the Edwards Dam impoundment. This report describes the methods used to collect and analyze the data used to create a map of sediment types in the Edwards Dam impoundment. The map is included with this report. Data used to map riverbed sediment types were also used to estimate the volume of observed mud and mud-containing sediment in the study area.
Scope/Content: Dam type: concrete
Scope/Content: Dam type: crib
Scope/Content: Dam type: timber
Scope/Content: Height: 24 Length: 917
Scope/Content: Date constructed: 1836.
Type: text
Form/Genre: url
Identifier: ark:/86086/n2mg7p60
105
Subject: Sediment and channel dynamics
Dams
Dam retirement
Place: Kennebec River, ME
Edwards Dam
US

About the collections in Calisphere

Learn more about the collections in Calisphere. View our statement on digital primary resources.

Copyright, permissions, and use

If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.

Share your story

Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.