Natural River Flow
Healthy Habitats
Transport Sediment
Cape Fear Shiner
Harperella
The Hoosier Dam Removal Project
Hoosier Dam was a concrete buttress dam with an attached hydroelectric powerhouse on the Rocky River in Chatham County, NC. The dam was built in 1922 and produced power until January 2016 when a fire destroyed the primary 150KW generator. Constructed of river stone and reinforced concrete, the dam had a total length of 235 feet and an average structural height of 25 feet.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) designated sections of the Rocky River upstream and downstream from Hoosier Dam, as well as a section of Bear Creek just below the dam, as Critical Habitat for the Cape Fear Shiner, a federally listed endangered species. The non-impounded sections of the Rocky River and Bear Creek exhibit very high-quality riverine habitat that supports a diverse collection of aquatic species including the Cape Fear Shiner and other species of concern. The dam represented a significant blockage to fish migration and as a result, USFWS has documented declines in the disconnected population upstream of the dam.
In 2016 our partners applied for and received a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant to complete the environmental, engineering, and construction related components of dam removal. After an extensive permitting and design period the dam was finally ready to be removed in the fall of 2018. The project partners started preliminary demolition work in September 2018. The USFWS Fish Passage team worked with our other partners to conduct the demolition of the dam in late October 2018.
As of November 2018, the Hoosier Dam has been removed and the Rocky River of North Carolina now flows unobstructed! You can view photos of the work on the dam and a short video showing progress in our media galleries below. We would like to thank the following partners, funders and others who made this project a success!
