Black River Day Trip - Lesterville, MO 8/6/06

Dave

Explorer
Natasha and I decided to head down to the Black River here in Missouri for an afternoon Day trip. The Black River is a clear running gravel bottom Ozark stream that has a gentle gradient and is perfect for lazy floats in a canoe. If you catch it just right, you can do pretty good catching smallmouth bass. In Missouri we have a volunteer organization called Stream Team. The purpose of Stream Team is keep the rivers of Missouri clean and monitor their health. My team has adopted roughly five miles of the Black River.

The Black River has recently been the center of an engineering disaster that I've been following rather closely for the past 8 months or so. AmerenUE, our local electrical provider, has a pump storage facilty located on a mountain near Lesterville, MO. The facility consists of a billion gallon "upper" resevoir and an even larger "lower" resevoir. The lower resevoir is fed by a tributary of the Black River called the East Fork of the Black River. Water is then pumped up to the upper resevoir during low demand periods. When demand for electricity peaks, the water is released from the upper resevoir to the lower resevoir down a mile long tunnel, thus turning turbines.

Last December, one side of the kidney shapped upper resevoir gave away and dumped the entire volume of the resevoir down the mountain side. The rush of nearly a billion gallons of water stripped the mountain side down to bedrock and all but demolished at very popular state park called Johnson Shut-Ins (JSI) in which the East Fork flows through a serious of closed in rocks known as "shut-ins". Five people suffered minor injuries and were treated for hypotherma. No one was killed. Luckily this this had happened during winter and the campground was empty. One of the ugly side effects of this event was the amount of silt that has been draining into lower resevoir from the East Fork and eventually into the clear running Black River. The latest effort to control the silt problem has resulted in a full drain of the lower resevoir. I had to see it for myself.

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Under normal conditions, the water would be nearly to the top of this overflow dam.

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Hopefully this will fix the silt issue. It was rather depressing to look down into the river and not be able to see the bottom this January. It does look much better then it did even just a few months ago, but it's not back to normal just yet.

Anyway, here's a few pictures from today

Neat fish that was incredibly not too scared of me walking right up to it:

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Looking up the Black River from the beginning of our adopted portion. Not a bad place to be on a 98° day!

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And the required picture of the truck on the gravel bar:

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This jaunt also gave me a chance to test out the new OME suspension and Kuhmo tires on twisty paved roads and twisty gravel roads. We loaded a few hundred pounds in the form of sand bags into the bed to mimic the weight of our gear for a typical week long trip. I was pleased with the improvement both on the paved roads and on the loose gravel roads. Money well spent!

To see more pictures of the damage from the resevoir breach, click here and here
 

Dave

Explorer
expeditionswest said:
Thanks for the update and trip report. Where is the next adventure to?

We'll be paddling on the Current River in the Ozark National Scenic Riverway national park next weekend. Just another clear running spring fed river in the Missouri Ozarks. :)

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Round Spring:

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Blue Spring:

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Pulltite Spring:

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Cave Spring:

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BajaTaco

Swashbuckler
So is this.

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Actually, all of those pics look really good, especially on a summer day. NICE!

Very sorry to hear of the reservoir breech and the consequences.
 

Dave

Explorer
Thanks guys! The springs and the rivers they feed are some of the most beautiful places in Missouri in my opinion. This is one of my favorites, Greer Spring. It actually has two boils and feeds the Eleven Point River.

The first boil:

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The second boil:

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And the spring branch:

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220 million gallons a day!

And of course some shots from the Eleven Point in April:

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That was a beautiful weekend. The redbuds and the dogwoods were in full bloom while the rest of the forest was still on the verge of budding. Fishing was slow, but we managed a few rainbows.
 
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BajaTaco

Swashbuckler
I'm really impressed. It's obvious you're just a tad passionate about these places, and you know your stuff. Once again, I see more beautiful places I had no idea of. The world seems to be full of them. THANKS for sharing the pics and words.

Keep up the good work :victory:
 

Dave

Explorer
BajaTaco said:
It's obvious you're just a tad passionate about these places, and you know your stuff.

We do cherish the places I've posted pictures of. My knowledge doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what there is to learn about the springs and rivers. The springs boggle my mind every time I try to fathom that much water just flowing out of the earth non-stop.

The whole karst nature of the Missouri Ozarks is just amazing and sometimes hard to wrap your brain around. It really forces you to think about how the environment is not just what you see on the surface but your actions on the surface can directly impact a whole other world that nobody sees.

If you guys ever do decide to do a trip out this way, there's all kinds of back roads and primitve camping to be taken advantage of. We like to do overnight paddling trips and live out of dry bags for a couple of days. On the Eleven Point, there are actually designated camp sites with vault toliets, fire rings, and picnic tables. On the Current River, there are endless gravel bars that are available for a true primitive camping experience. I'd recommend a paddling trip during the week or on a Sunday if possible during the peak summer season. During the weekends the rivers can turn into a place where people go to cut loose...we plan on hitting the water real early in the morning this weekend to hopefully get out ahead of rowdy groups.
 

Dave

Explorer
Just a short update on the Black River here in Missouri. As you may recall from the beginning of this thread, the Black was the site of a significant engineering and operational failure which resulted in the collapse of a reservoir. The state park that was totaled is now open for the summer, swimming is allowed and day use areas are available, however camping will not be ready this year.

So far no criminal charges have been brought against the utility company responsible for the facility that failed, however the EPA has recently initiated their own investigation into the matter. The utility is planning to rebuild, this time with concrete, pending FERC approval.

The most important (to me) news to report is that the Black River is once again running crystal clear and it has it's beautiful blue hue back. We took a day trip down this past Sunday and were presently surprised to see the river back to looking the way it should. The river looked healthy again.
 

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