(This story by Matt Hongoltz-Hetling was published in the Valley News on Aug. 21, 2017.)
[W]EST WINDSOR — Even if the Connecticut River’s water becomes as pristine as it was before the Industrial Revolution, dams within the watershed prevent it from providing full support to the ecosystem, an Upper Valley environmentalist said on Monday.
But there’s some good news, Ron Rhodes, river steward with the Connecticut River Conservancy, told members of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions.
Behind the scenes, the conservancy is busily working to remove about a dozen dams throughout the Twin States, creating better water flow and removing impediments for spawning trout along hundreds of miles of Connecticut River tributaries.
Rhodes gave the update at the West Windsor Town Hall on Monday afternoon to members of the commissions, who took breaks in their regularly scheduled meeting to monitor the progress of the solar eclipse, using viewing glasses and a pinhole device made out of aluminum foil and a Special K cereal box.
Commissioners were interested in how to advance the work of taking down more obsolete “deadbeat dams” that are quietly clogging the region’s waterways.
“It sounds like liability is a big part of what’s motivating dam owners to look into dam removal,” said Tara Bamford, of Thetford, a member of Vermont’s Connecticut River Watershed Advisory Commission.
Rhodes agreed. He said that, over the past two decades, the public has become much more aware of the environmental damage that dams can do.
“We’re getting calls from people saying ‘my Realtor is telling me to remove the dam before we sell the property,’ or that they heard from an insurance agent who said ‘get rid of that dam,’” Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the informed and motivated public helps him to leverage the funds the nonprofit uses to physically remove the dams.
The dams have been built for a variety of reasons, but few of them are serving an ongoing purpose, Rhodes said.
Earlier that day, he said, he had been working on the final stages of a project to remove the Geer Dam from the Ompompanoosuc River in West Fairlee. The small hydroelectric dam was on the property of a farmer who hadn’t used it to produce electricity for more than 20 years.
“Since 1994, it was just blocking fish passage” from 17 miles of water, Rhodes said. “The fish were lined up waiting to get upstream.”
Future projects cited by Rhodes include the Clark Pond Dam and the Pine Mill Dam on Clark Brook in Haverhill, a dam downstream of Harvey Lake in Barnet, a dam on the Charles Brown Brook that supported the Old Norwich Pool swimming hole in Norwich before it was washed out by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
“If you want to see one, there’s another right across the street on Mill Brook here in West Windsor,” Rhodes said.
Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, who recently retired from a 19-year career as the river steward for the Connecticut River Watershed Council, said that another obstacle facing river liberation is that, on the Vermont side of the Connecticut, no one even knows where some of the dams are.
“We don’t have a register of dams in Vermont. They do in New Hampshire,” said Deen, who also chairs the Vermont House Committee on Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources. “We have incomplete, insufficient information. We’re trying to rectify that.”
Deen is the sponsor of a bill, H.92, which would require dam owners to register them with the Department of Environmental Conservation, and subject them to a series of regulations and safety inspections.
In March, the bill was referred to the Vermont House Committee on Ways and Means.
The Connecticut River Joint Commissions is made up of the Connecticut River Valley Resource Commission, and the Connecticut River Watershed Advisory Commission, each of which was created by the Vermont Legislature in the 1980s.
Correction, Aug. 24, 11:56 a.m.: Harvey Lake is in Barnet, not Barnard.