River Flow Information
Places To Stay
But as use of the Black as a whitewater resource gained momentum, its value as a
potential power source was hardly forgotten. Unknown to ARO, Glen Park
Associates, a private utility, was completing the licensing requirements of the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to build a hydro-electric project
at the head of the gorge.
The project called for a dam to be thrown across the river just above Glen
Park Falls to divert nearly the entire flow of the Black through a power canal
paralleling the river's course. A mile of the river's best rapids would be
dewatered, effectively ending whitewater rafting and boating. But by the time
ARO discovered the extent of the project, the permit had been approved.
Still ARO immediately began opposition to the project and found an ally in the
American Whitewater Affiliation-the national organization of whitewater boaters.
ARO and AWA mounted a campaign to halt the project, but their efforts seemed no
more than a few grains of sand in the inexorable wheels of development.
Construction started on the power canal and it appeared that Black River
whitewater was doomed.
But then the conservationists discovered that Glen Park's canal was not being
built to the specifications of the permit, the capacity of the canal being
larger than originally approved. It was the loop-hole that ARO and AWA needed.
Suddenly the utility was willing to sit down and talk to the raft company. What
evolved from the negotiations was a watershed agreement between ARO, AWA and
Glen Park that is considered by FERC as a precedent-setting example of how
developers and recreationalists can share a whitewater resource.
The agreement established a schedule of water releases through the summer so
that commercial rafters and private boaters can continue to enjoy the Black's
rapids. Glen Park also agreed to construct a portage path around its low dam and
plant screening vegetation so that the scenic nature of the Black River Gorge
was preserved.
The release process is amazingly user friendly. On release days (seven days a
week through July and August), when paddlers or a raft trip approach Glen Park,
the turbines are turned off and water is allowed to spill over the dam and back
into the Gorge. Within 10 minutes an incredible metamorphosis takes place. The
rock-strewn riverbed at the bottom of the portage trail is transformed into the
class IV Three Rocks rapid.
And for kayakers, the release process has had another significant repercussion.
Because the flow of water over the dam builds gradually, boaters were able to
run Glen Park Falls at lower, manageable levels. Consequently, Glen Park has
become one of the most accessible waterfall runs in the country.
Since the agreement, the Black has continued to grow as a Northeastern
whitewater destination. Typically, more than 10,000 boaters and rafters
experience the rapids of the Black River Gorge each summer and the River's
increasing popularity has focused attention on the river as a regional
whitewater resource.
In 1991, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation named several
sections of the Black as a recreational river, limiting future development.
Then, in 1992, the Niagara-Mohawk Power Company listed the Black as a whitewater
resource to be maintained in its system-wide whitewater assessment and later
agreed to better manage optimum flows and provide access to upstream reaches of
rapids.
And in 1994, the city of Watertown completed construction of a riverwalk
paralleling several of the rapids just downstream from where ARO commences its
trips.
Pierre Pharoux would never had guessed what he started.