“This is a ticking time bomb,” said Marc Gaden, spokesperson for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a U.S-Canadian fishery management entity that is leading the project and is a party to the lawsuit. “The city needs to know, one way or another, how to proceed.”
FishPass is the capstone to a decades-long effort to restore fish habitat on the Boardman River, which flows through Traverse City. After three dam removals upstream, city leaders had planned to replace the last remaining dam on the Boardman — an old mill dam in downtown Traverse City — with a new barrier.
That barrier would include a research facility where scientists would test technology designed to allow some fish species to pass upstream beyond the dam, while locking others downstream.