Minutes - Council - 06/09/1998 - Public Hearing

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All rivers change course over time by way of the inevitable, natural and normal process of erosion steadily wearing away over the years at the softest paths of least resistance. The Rum River is no exception. Add in large jagged chunks of ice during the spring breakup along with fallen tree trunks and other natural debris, and together with the high water and rushing current from snow melt and spring rains, the ice and debris act as battering rams speeding the erosion process along. Other long time residents of the area have commented about this in a similar fashion. As an example, I call the council's attention to the comments of Gordon Engels, who lives on the fiver in Andover and has fished it for over 50 years. I quote from a copy of the minutes from the Andover public hearing concerning this matter held in May of last year. "It is not the fishermen causing the problem. The floods and ice in the spring do more damage in one year than 50 years of driving a boat down the river." You don't have to have lived on the river as long as Gordon or myself have to understand of how this process works. Y'ou can sit on the bank as I have with my young son in the spring when the river ice breaks up and observe this for yourself. My son and I have watched first hand as ice chunks, one after another, have failed to negotiate the turn in the river by my house, crunched into the bank, twisted in the current and headed on down the river each taking with them a "shovel full" of my land--land I am still required to pay taxes on, but no longer own. This process goes on 24 hours a day for about 2 weeks or longer every spring. It is Nature at work and marvelous to watch first hand. The river is going to do what it wants to do and go where it wants to go--again, ask the people of Grand Forks or those in some of the river towns down river on the Mississippi. Anyone who chooses to live next to a river has to be willing to accept the risks involved to their lives and property from the natural and normal process of flooding and erosion. The truth is, ifa community doesn't have what the Andover originators of this ordinance have termed "erosion prone spots" on it's river, then that community doesn't really have a river. What it has instead is a canal or an aqueduct. The words river and erosion are intertwined and inseparable. It is almost impossible to naturally have a river without also having erosion. Some of the originators of this ordinance apparently took a canoe trip down the river last summer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, none of them had any training in Geology or Hydrology or have ever lived along a river for very long. Yet, along the way they arbitrarily designated what they believed to be abnormal "erosion prone spots" and now claim that those spots need protection from watercraft wakes. I am also very familiar with these spots and do not disagree that there is erosion at work on them. However, I completely disagree with the notion that that erosion is, first of all, abnormal and, second of all, caused by watercraft wakes. I further believe that you could take a trip down any natural river anywhere, including those that are too small and shallow' to support any motorized watercraft, and you will find areas along the bends and turns that would equally qualify, by their definition, as abnormal "erosion prone spots". And what about all the smaller streams, brooks and creeks that exhibit the same signs of erosion along some of their bends and turns and yet are also much too small to support any motorized watercraft? What is the cause of erosion on them? Certainly not watercraft wakes!? There have never been any watercraft on them!