Under an agreement announced in late April, Exelon Corp., the owner of Conowingo Dam, has pledged to take a series of steps to help American shad and river herring get past that 94-foot barrier and three other hydroelectric facilities on the Bay’s largest tributary that for decades have impeded the species’ once-legendary spawning runs.
Shad and their cousins, river herring, once swam far upriver every spring to spawn, and in the 18th and 19th centuries fishermen netted them by the millions. Shad, in particular, became one of the most commercially valuable fish throughout the Bay, and was the biggest fishery in the Susquehanna.
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