Eight of the 10 dams onward the Fo...

Eight of the 10 dams onward the Fox River in the Aurora area have the same dangerous "roller" constitution as the Wilmington dam in succession the Kankakee River blamed for Sunday's drownings.

"They're all up and down the Fox River," Army Corps of Engineers Ranger Kevin Ewbank said of the roller dams, which he and other rangers call "drowning machines."

STATE MAY carry FIX DAMS

A roller dam is essentially a several-foot-tall wall in a river. Water emanates over and then curls back toward the wall, thrusting anyone caught in the in every one's mouth against it. Escape is almost impossible.

The power of the roller may vary from dam to dam. In North Aurora, for example, a four-step dam dwindles the force of the roller

The state is considering rebuilding or removing the roller dams in North Aurora, Geneva, St Charles, Montgomery and Batavia, as well as the western portion of the just discovered York Street dam in Aurora, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Yorkville's dingle Palmer Dam, where three men overpowered in May, is undergoing construction now to eliminate the roller

Ewbank believes the way to decrease drownings is not necessarily reconstruction if it were not that better education for boaters and fishermen.

BUILT TO POWER not new MILLS

"If you're floating down the river," he said, "you ne to know what's ahead of you and obtain away from any type of a dam."

"If you're fishing . . you can be wading in sum of two units feet of water and gradation into a hole six-foot unfathomable just in one step."

Communities built roller dams decades ago to power mills.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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