‘People don’t understand’ dangers of underwater dam that’s intact but ignored

Karly Fear was paddling peacefully in the cerulean Willamette River with her mom when she was side-swept by a hidden current. The kayak started taking on water. 

Just upstream of the Interstate 5 bridge between Eugene and Springfield, the water pulled her toward a concrete wall.

“It was scary,” she said. “That current, even though it doesn’t look bad, the current is really strong.” 

That’s because it was engineered that way, as part of a low-head dam — a submerged barrier across a river. Low-head dams are known for creating recirculating flows that can overturn boats and trap even experienced paddlers.

Fear climbed out of her kayak. Her mother docked on a nearby gravel bar and walked across the top of the dam. They eventually broke the kayak free, then paddled another hour to their pickup point, where her father, Michael, learned what had happened.

“They got trapped,” he said. 

That was in 2018, but Michael is often reminded of that terrifying day. As general manager of the Tru by Hilton hotel on Franklin Boulevard — across the street from the dam — he frequently watches from his office window as emergency responders arrive for water rescues. His guests have a bird’s-eye view.

Among recent events, on the evening of July 3, crews responded to a woman who drowned downstream of the Knickerbocker Ped/Bike Bridge after losing her float. While this stretch is known for rough, unpredictable passage, authorities said the dam was not a factor in her death. A similar tragedy happened in 2020, when two paddlers drowned in a diversion channel around the dam.

River guides, authorities and advocates all told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the dam has long created a treacherous situation — one that’s only getting worse as the concrete seemingly erodes, making the water more turbulent. In an era of hotter summers and more people desperate to cool off, they say the time has never been more urgent for overdue action from local authorities.

Meanwhile, those authorities concede the dam is dangerous, but no one is willing to accept jurisdiction over it — or to shoulder the costs of removing it.

Old haunts, modern problems 

Nearly two centuries ago, developers behind Eugene’s industrial revolution harnessed the force of the Willamette River into a man-made channel with a waterwheel to power lumber and flour mills. The channel became known as the Eugene Millrace.

The millrace has a checkered history of property ownership but ultimately landed in the hands of the Chambers Power Co., which faced growing demand. To boost water flow, the company built a low diversion dam — at first a beaver-dam-like heap of brush, rock and timber. Eventually, concrete slabs that hug the river like a curb replaced it between 1910 and 1928, historians estimate. 

The millrace soon became obsolete as power lines delivered electricity from hydro systems on the Columbia River, and the company dissolved.

Today, what remains of the millrace channel functions more like a storm sewer, while the University of Oregon and Autzen Stadium loom over the ghost of the dam — a relic many paddlers notice only when they stumble upon it in the water.

That happened to Mike McFarlane, who was paddling with a group of Willamette Riverkeeper volunteers on a trash cleanup about six years ago, when someone on the riverbank started yelling for them to keep to the side.

“I’m going, ‘Why are you all so upset?’” he recalled.

Then he saw the blocks of cement cresting the water — and realized they’d narrowly missed the dam. McFarlane, who had just moved to Eugene after retiring, couldn’t shake the feeling of going by in swift waters.

“Why haven’t they taken care of that?” McFarlane said. “What I got for the first two years [of advocacy] was people looking at me and going, ‘Well, that’s the way it is. The way it has always been.’ And I’m going, ‘No, it doesn’t have to.’”

Addressing the ‘Maytag washer effect’ 

McFarlane is several years into his relentless advocacy, talking with elected officials and personally warning floaters about the dangers ahead of them at the boating ramps.

But he’s still searching for answers to questions many in the community share — both practical and existential — that center on which agency, if any, has the authority or capacity to act. 

“The short answer is, it’s nobody’s responsibility,” said Lane County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Wallace, whose office includes a marine patrol that responds when people get in trouble on the river.

“The river itself is a state waterway, but the dam was put in by a private company that no longer exists,” Wallace said. “No one’s really wanting to foot the bill.”

Solutions could range from full removal of the dam to installing official signage warning boaters at ramps and other access points, such as those in Eastgate Woodlands and the Whilamut Natural Area before the Interstate 5 bridge. No analysis has yet been conducted to estimate the costs. 

Willamalane Park and Recreation District manages the land along the river near the low-head dam but says its authority stops at the water’s edge.

“The waterway itself is not under Willamalane’s management,” spokesperson Whitney Hoshaw said. “We can help facilitate any access other agencies may need via our park related to the waterway, but the low-head dam falls outside our jurisdiction.”

That sentiment — that the dam falls outside their legal authority to manage — is one McFarlane and other environmentalists say they’ve repeatedly heard, from city governments as well.

Marion Suitor Barnes, spokesperson for Eugene Public Works, told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the city is not taking responsibility for the dam, but that it has set aside $50,000 in the budget to partially fund a feasibility study to investigate removal of the structure. 

“Every expectation is that the future of the dam structure will be decided by a group of regional agencies,” Barnes said. 

A feasibility study would likely assess the dam’s structural condition, evaluate potential impacts on nearby infrastructure, such as the Interstate 5 bridge, and recommend next steps.

Randy Groves, a Eugene city councilor (and former Eugene Springfield Fire chief) has long supported an official inspection of the structure.

“I understand it’s a big deal and who’s going to pay for it is the deal,” said Groves, who himself spent time on the water rescue team and responded to incidents at the dam.

“People don’t understand the dangers,” he said. “They go over [the dam] and it pulls them right back into it. It’s like a Maytag washer effect.” 

Solutions big and small 

Marcel Bieg, outdoor recreation program supervisor at the River House Outdoor Center for the city of Eugene, is all too familiar with the “Maytag washer effect.” Low-head dams have earned other nicknames, too — for instance, “drowning machines” — for the swirling currents that trap people paddling or floating in an underwater loop that even a life jacket cannot save them from. 

Bieg, a longtime river recreation educator and kayaker, has investigated the dam himself. Years ago, during unusually low water, he crawled beneath the structure and discovered a hole 3 to 4 feet deep — large enough for a person to fit inside — eroding in the concrete. He believes that decades of water chewing away at the back side of the weirs have hollowed out part of the dam.

If left unchecked, he warns, the erosion could create a dangerous scenario where water passes through, but where debris or people could become trapped. 

“Eventually it’ll get big enough that the whole structure will collapse,” Bieg said.

But he believes removal isn’t the only option. Instead, he sees an opportunity to turn a hazard into an asset — by transforming the dam into a whitewater park. 

Bieg pointed to communities across the country, some as close as Bend, that have redesigned dangerous water areas into controlled white-water features. Such parks serve two purposes, he said: They make the water safer, and they create an economic boost by attracting visitors.

“Those are just some things to consider when thinking about how to make this safe. Is it smarter to just remove it, or is it smarter to utilize it and create more financial stability for the community and use it for education and training?” Bieg said.

In the meantime, people who have survived close calls with the dam, like Karly Fear and her family, say even a simple warning sign would help. In part because no jurisdiction has claimed ownership, there are no official warnings — only a couple of handmade signs left by others.

“I just remember not seeing whatever danger was apparently there, and it all just happened so fast,” Fear recalled from her 2018 incident. “I was safe one second and then in a dangerous situation the next second. 

“Signage in terms of what area of the river is safest to pass through there would be an easy first step to making that safer,” she said. 

Lookout Eugene-Springfield reporter Ben Botkin contributed to this report.