Otter Tail River will have a new dam in Becker County

By Tom Hintgen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published 12:27 p.m., August 5, 2009

Big Elbow Lake in Becker County is the source of the Otter Tail River that runs to Otter Tail Lake In Otter Tail County and then to Breckenridge in Wilkin County. At Breckenridge-Wahpeton the Otter Tail River meets the Bois de Sioux River, from the south, to form the Red River of the North that flows northward to Fargo-Moorhead, Grand Forks-East Grand Forks and across the border to northward Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Several dams along the Otter Tail River are located near Fergus Falls.

Work is now underway on a dam on Hubbel Pond in Becker County. The Otter Tail River flows through Hubbel Pond. The Hubbel Pond Game Refuge is located immediately south of the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge off County Road 29, northeast of Detroit Lakes.

Work on a dam on Hubbel Pond has not caused the Otter Tail River's water level to drop, according to DNR Area Wildlife Supervisor Earl Johnson. A contractor is in the process of building a new dam to hold back the 500-acre water impoundment. It will sit next to a historic 1953 logging dam, which

will be destroyed when the new dam is finished.

The new dam will be installed in the same earthen berm across the river as the 1953 dam.

“The old dam will remain in place until the new one is functional, then the flow will switch," Johnson said. "Work on the new one includes concrete pouring."

Stop logs on the dam have been set to allow maximum river flow for the past few years, because of high water levels at Hubbel Pond and around this area of Becker County.

"Since the commercial interests in tubing started in the mid-1980s, we’ve never managed water flows for tubing," Johnson said. “The DNR has always tried to do our alterations so they didn't affect the level for tubing."

The DNR has, however, historically manipulated water levels for wild rice growing in Hubbel Pond — both for human harvesting purposes and for wildfowl that fill up on rice before migrating south. This time of year, wild rice is in its most sensitive growing phase — the floating leaf stage.

"It grows under water until it sends out a leaf or two, which eventually stands up and develops a seed head,” said Johnson, “on a seed stalk that grows three to four feet above the surface of the water.”

During the floating leaf stage, a sudden rise in water level will pull the plant up by its roots from underneath.

"The last several years have had significant spring water flows and all the stop logs have been out at Hubbel Pond,” said Johnson, “trying to get the water to pass through. No stop logs have been in or out for the last 3-4 years.”

There are two stop log bays and the DNR can only raise or lower the water level by one foot, Johnson said.

"It doesn't give us a lot of capability to manage water levels," he added. "The new (dam) structure will not change that a whole lot, although the design will allow more outflow during times of high water.”

The dam is also designed to keep carp and other undesirable fish out of the Tamarac Wildlife Refuge and other waters above Hubbel Pond.

“We want to maintain the dam as a rough fish barrier to carp," Johnson said.

The deadline for completion of the new dam is in November, although if the weather cooperates it could be done within a month, Johnson said.

The main contractor is Landwehr Construction of St. Cloud, but a local concrete subcontractor is Matt Splonskowski, who grew up across the road from Hubbel Pond in Becker County. His grandfather, Merl Schermerhorn, was a DNR technician at Hubbel Pond Game Refuge for 30 years.

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