I was once told an "Expert" is a village idiot from another town.
This story confirms it!!!

Idea makes sense

Perhaps they could also re-direct the hot air from City Hall.

Doing nothing isn't working. This sounds interesting!

Tell me they are kidding?
30 feet from the hotwater outlet, the hotwater will be as cold as the ice.
The only way this would work is if there was an incredible amount of water volume/flow over the ice.
How they gonna do that?
It would be great if it worked, but I seriously doubt it will.
I still think dynamite to blow a trough in the ice pack for the water to flow through/over should at least be tried?

The environmentalists will never allow it! Hot water into the river? Cooking fish?

Also, it's one thing to keep ice from forming and melting what's already there.

But as realitysetsin says, doing nothing isn't working either.

Is it April 1st.

Is there such a thing as an icebreaker for rivers in our area or is all money used up already?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ieosHC8FU&feature=related

OMG!!! it must be 4:20 time at city hall!!

April 1st came early this Year.

Oh...MY...God...they are serious!

I heard the "ice expert" on CBC radio today and the guy sounds like a total lunatic...

I have listened to this guy northman,and you may very well be right!
Sure hope he doesn't find himself in "hotwater" with some of his hairbrained ideas!
:-)

They need to hire "experts" that know how to un-block ice jams not an expert to confirm indeed there is a problem which seems to be the case here. I bet a couple bridge and road engineers could get the job done due their experences removing ice jams from bridges and to protect roads. These people have some pretty amazing talents when it comes to finding solutions with watershed problems.

Posted by: Tom Masich
[I was once told an "Expert" is a village idiot from another town.
This story confirms it!!!]

I couldn't agree more.

heidi1555's link makes the most sense surely they could bring one in,it would probably be a lot cheaper then the millions they are talking about with the hot water. According to some of the Ole Timers here they used to dredge at the junction years ago. As someone stated on another page the gravel from Miworth has probably settled there. I would think putting hot water in the river would be more damaging to fish then dredging. Ice jams are not new they have been dealing with them in the States, so why not bring in an actual expert from there.

"heidi1555's link makes the most sense surely they could bring one in,it would probably be a lot cheaper then the millions they are talking about with the hot water."

Look closely at the video. The ice being broken up is the ice that has formed on the surface of the river or canal system of the Rideau.

The ice is smooth, it could be used to break up the ice in the Fraser at this time. The ice jam on the Nechako is made up of large chunks of jagged ice. That machine would not work on there.

In addition, the Rideau is a slow moving river, unlike the Fraser and the Nechako. That causes other problems.

However, they may be able to come up with another machine.

Heating the water is not that fanatic an idea. It is not as if the water in the entire river has to be heated. A channel only has to be kept open. They do that as routine in other places with bubblers. Of course, our river is already fast moving, so bubleers will not do much for us, but warm water fed into a side channel below is another story altogether.

Read this book on River Lake Ice Engineering. It speaks about normal man made activities impacts on bodies of water.

Notice the effect of removing water as water intake for industrial or community uses ..... the smaller amount if water in the channel or bay where it is removed from will form more ice .....

By the same token, if water used for cooling an industrial process is dumped into a body of water, the ice will not form or will form in much smaller quantities and thickness.

Read bottom of page 6 and top of page 7 .....

http://books.google.com/books?id=xglYVjAsnt8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=break+ice+jam+heated+water&source=web&ots=JPKxF7KFTB&sig=iGXE1Rrlfooc75LHCsn9Ei9JMEg#PPA6,M1

It seems that the people of Montpelier Vermont also have idiots running their show.....

they pump 45F water from hydrants into the river as well as 50F water redirected from their sewage treatment plant.

http://www.disasternews.net/news/article.php?articleid=2912

and one more .... 68F water ..... this was in a spring breakup situation, not mid winter ..... but these idiots tried it and it worked .....

don't you just love idiots ....???

;-)

http://www.usace.army.mil/publications/eng-pamphlets/ep1110-2-11/c-5.pdf

Just think, for every one of thes found on the net with a few words put into a search engine, there are probably 10 others we do not know about.

As one web site I ran accross in this short search said, the amount of research on iced up rivers is miniscule compared to research on open rivers.

That begs the question - can we create a research project here? ... UNBC ... UofA ... federal grant .....

sorry UBC, you guys got no ice ...... :-)

Yeah after watching Global news last night I saw how chunky and thick that ice was and pictured it swallowing up that tiny little ice breaking machine.....but the other link I posted on prevention seems like a good idea???? :)

When I want something done, I want it done now which isn't always the best idea I see......I just feel bad for home owners/business owners/people out of work at this time of year.