Memphis District using retrieved snags to improve fish habitat  

Snags (submerged logs and stumps that block rivers) were a grave threat to the thin-hulled wooded steamboats that plied the rivers of early America.  On May 30, 1824, Congress passed the General Survey Act authorizing Army engineers to survey road and canal routes "of national importance, in a commercial or military point of view."

A few weeks later, on May 24, Congress appropriated $75,000 for improving navigation on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.  Almost immediately, the Corps began attacking the snags and sandbars that impeded river commerce.

By the 1880s, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) could write in Life on the Mississippi "....& the peril from snags is not now what it once was.  The government's snagboats go patrolling up and down & pulling the river's teeth.  They have rooted out all the old clusters which once made many localities so formidable, and they allow no new ones to collect."

The snagboats that Clemens saw during his trip down the Mississippi River were specialized double-hulled vessels developed in 1829 by the famous steamboat captain Henry Shreve.  An iron beam connecting the twin hulls was used as a battering ram to dislodge a snag from the river bed.  The boat's cranes could lift a submerged tree weighing 75 tons lodged up to 20 feet deep, and lumbermen on the boat cut the trees into pieces.

The big pieces of trees fed the boilers of the old snagboats, and the small limbs were released to float downstream.  But today, when Memphis District pulls snags from the White River, they are used to improve fish habitat.

In the past, Memphis District has removed trees by hoisting them onto the deck of the snagboat Lusk and placing them either on or behind sandbars.  During low flow periods these snag piles are left high and dry, but when water levels rise again they sometimes wash back into the river and become a problem.

But thanks to the combined efforts of Memphis District, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the snags are now partially submerged in strategic locations to provide much-needed cover for fish.

Engineers selected three snag placement locations in McCrutchens Bend cut-off and one in the main stem of the river.  This positive enhancement for the aquatic life of the White River adds no additional operating costs for the Corps.

"With careful placement and site selection, these discarded snags would enhance fisheries by providing resting, hiding and feeding areas," said Patricia Jones of Memphis District's Environmental Branch.  "We expect to continue this process of snag placement for fisheries habitat in the future."