! Available well-equipped recreation place.
The dam on the Daugava-Misa Canal is a part of a large complex of hydraulic structures, built in the 1960s. At that time, Olaine Biochemical Reagent Plant discharged part of its insufficiently treated wastewater into the Misa river. As a result, the fish living in the river and its other inhabitants suffered badly - there was practically no fish left. A solution was desperately needed to at least partly protect the environment, therefore this hydrotechnical complex “Daugava-Misa Canal” was built, the idea of which was popular throughout the Soviet Union - to solve pollution problems by reducing the concentration by diluting the polluted water. It was based on a proposal to divert a tremendous amount of Daugava water to the Misa river through Ķekava. This complex included a water intake structure on the Daugava river, underground pipelines and tunnels, open canal sections, pumping stations, and a water discharge structure on the Misa river with a total length of more than 10 km. This complex is unique in the whole of Latvia also because the main flow of the Ķekava river in the area of this canal was turned in the opposite direction. This is the only river in Latvia with which such manipulation has ever been performed. In the Soviet Union at the time, reversing rivers was a fairly popular method used several times in the construction of large hydropower plants. It affirmed the slogan that was popular at that time, that a Soviet man was the ruler of nature and was even able to make rivers flow in the opposite direction. Of course, they did not think much of what such attitudes and actions can do to nature. In later years, when the Olaine factory built its treatment plant, the pollution in the Misa decreased and the large hydraulic complex lost its original significance. However, the open canals, as components of the hydraulic complex, still perform the function of amelioration of separate areas. In the section of the Ķekava river from the Dam to the Daugava river, during the lifting of the shutters, a rowing competition “Autumn Dam Row” has been organized. Currently, a well-maintained recreation place is opened near the Dam, which is especially popular with families with children.
