By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page C06

In a place where even a quick sweep with a metal detector might yield a Civil War-era cannonball or bullet, the explosion scheduled in Fredericksburg at noon tomorrow will be epic in its own, modern way.

Hundreds of spectators are expected to crowd the banks of the Rappahannock River to see military divers and munitions experts set off 650 pounds of plastic explosives under the 94-year-old Embrey Dam, blowing a 100-foot hole in it to let the river run free again. The big bang will be the start of a long-anticipated demolition project that means different things to different people.

For environmentalists and anglers, it means replenished populations of migratory fish that will be able to go upriver to spawn. For paddlers, it eventually will mean shooting the white water instead of portaging canoes and kayaks around the dam.

But for those who don't care about fish ladders or Class 3 rapids, tomorrow's breach is simply a sentimental event, the razing of a relic of an industrial era when the river's shore was dotted with mills where everyone you knew worked. For weeks, people from all walks of life have been filling farewell tours run by Friends of the Rappahannock, the local river advocacy group, and yesterday, a last-hurrah bonfire marked the dam's last day.

Embrey will be the first significant dam to come down in Virginia "in modern times," said Alan Weaver of the state's Game and Inland Fisheries Department, and its destruction will make the Rappahannock the longest free-flowing river in the Chesapeake Bay watershed -- 184 miles from the Shenandoah Mountains to the bay.

It is also the second-largest dam to come down in the United States since 1999, when the Edwards Dam was breached in Maine, a date many see as the start of a movement to restore American rivers by removing dams and bringing back natural flows. Virginia and Maryland have lagged in this movement, said Serena McClain of American Rivers, a national advocacy group.

The Rappahannock's significance to greater Fredericksburg is like the Potomac's to Washington. It has provided drinking water and electrical power, a place to fish and canoe and end road races, a place to mourn risk-taking young people who dared and drowned, and a lush, live backdrop for endless true stories about Union and Confederate soldiers facing one another across its waters.

"I've been on the Rappahannock since I was a Boy Scout and I've always been in love with it," said Bill Micks, 56, a former Stafford high school coach who runs an outfitting business on the river. "It's the place to go when you want to re-energize yourself. There is a lot of growth taking place in the Fredericksburg area, but the river looks the same. It's an incredible place."

Frank Shelton, 85, who grew up in a cottage on the Stafford County side of the river, remembers the days when the dam fed drinking water into a canal that today serves only as scenery for a jogging path, now that there is a water treatment plant upriver.

"I remember when kids would disappear and then they'd find them dead in the canal," Shelton said during a tour last week, rattling off names of friends who died as boys in swimming accidents.

Shelton was among hundreds of people who have come to the dam in recent weeks, many with cameras and video recorders. For two Saturdays in a row, river advocates have hosted reminiscing sessions on the beach just below the dam, making a fire where people drank hot chocolate and told stories about the river and the dam's past. Today, the river's banks in downtown Fredericksburg are a graveyard of textile and grain mills, hulking, empty shells with broken windows.

Embrey's demise will open up hundreds of miles of main stem and tributary waters to migratory fish -- including American shad, hickory shad and blueback herring -- for the first time since 1854, when a wooden crib dam was built to power mills.

Anglers will see results immediately, as spawning season begins next month. Boaters, however, will have to wait, as the river around the dam is expected to be closed for one to two years while chunks of concrete and steel are removed.

But white-water kayakers and canoeists are excited to see what will happen to the river's grade -- and thus its rapids -- when the 22-foot-high dam comes down. Some hydrologists say the complete removal of the dam could open up a new mile of white water, but some people might not be able to wait to find out.

"When people will be out on the river is probably something I shouldn't comment on," joked Bob Gramann, a local singer and white-water canoeist who paddles the Rappahannock several times a week, even through the winter if the water isn't frozen.

The breach is an especially big event for nature-lovers in a region where development is seen as overtaking the landscape. City officials made commemorative mugs and earplug holders, and the local newspaper for weeks has been running detailed instructions about where to park and stand.

Among prized mementos are pieces of the crib dam that sits, now submerged, just above the Embrey. It was breached last year with a crane and will be removed as part of the project. Pine and oak timbers have been floating around downtown Fredericksburg for weeks, and boaters and waders have been dragging them in. Woodworkers were said to be making bowls, chairs and fireplace mantelpieces from the finds.

The river's level rises dramatically even with regular rains, so the Army Corps of Engineers team members overseeing the project say that within hours of the breach, most of the Rappahannock won't look any different than usual. But drama could be high temporarily, with roads closed off within about 1,000 yards of the dam and state police helicopters and sheriffs patrolling woods to keep people out of harm's way. The city dam's neighbors have received leaflets advising them to consider moving pets that might be frightened by the noise and taking fragile hangings off walls in case of tremors. Officials also have set up 500 seats in the downtown armory, where spectators can watch a live broadcast of an event that was a long time coming and might never have happened.

Although river advocates had been pushing for it since the 1980s, it wasn't until the mid-1990s, when city officials faced high maintenance costs and a growing concern about accidents, that they decided to join Spotsylvania County in building a new water treatment plant. That made the dam useless for anything but decoration, since it hadn't produced power since the 1960s.

The Embrey Dam was out of a job just as the global anti-dam movement was beginning, and Friends of the Rappahannock ran annual "bucket brigades," publicity stunts in which dozens of people lined up with buckets to boost shad and herring around and over the dam so they could spawn.

But what really made the breach and demolition possible was the unusual guarantee, secured by U.S. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), of full federal funding for a project that will cost more than $10 million. Warner will push the button a few minutes after noon tomorrow.

These days are golden for river advocates, who worry that residents see the river so regularly that they forget to think about it. "Especially we have a lot of come-heres, they get into traffic, come home after dark, and they don't get it," said Gramann, who will sing his 1993 song "Rappahannock Running Free" at tomorrow's pre-blast ceremony.

"I think people have forgotten how much of a biomass this is," fly-fishing guide Smith Coleman said of the fish trapped below the dam all these years. "We're going to see a river turned silver in a few short years."