Westerly Town Council Decides Potter Hill Dam to Survive Mill Demolition
By CYNTHIA DRUMMOND/ecoRI News contributor
The Potter Hill Dam in Westerly, R.I., is the only remaining dam on the Pawcatuck River. (Cynthia Drummond photos)
Members of the partnership planning the removal of the Potter Hill
Dam and mill were surprised when Town Council members voted Jan. 31 to demolish
the derelict mill but leave the dam alone.
Funded by an initial $100,000 grant from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the project, which originally included
removing the dam as well as the mill, has also received more than $100,000 in
in-kind donations.
The goal of the dam removal was to restore the river to its
natural flow, which would in turn revive wetlands drowned by the water impoundment
and allow migratory fish to swim freely up the river. Partners in the project,
in addition to the Town Council, are the Westerly Conservation Commission, The
Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S.
Geological Survey, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management
(RIDEM), the Southern Rhode Island Conservation District, the Wood-Pawcatuck
Watershed Association and the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association.
Built in the 1780s, the Potter Hill Dam is the only remaining dam
on the Pawcatuck River. The mill, which was recently the focus of a failed
private redevelopment plan, continues to decay and crumble into the river. Both
the dam and the mill are currently in receivership.
Less than a year ago, the dam removal seemed a certainty when
state and municipal officials and residents attending a public information
meeting were presented with several options for
its removal.
At that meeting, the town’s director of public services, Lisa
Pellegrini, described the site as “a big, expensive problem” which, in addition
to posing a public safety hazard, put the town at an increased risk for
flooding.
“If the dam fails, there will be a devastating flood that will greatly affect Westerly,” she said.
However, the Town Council had more recently backed away from the
dam’s total removal and proposed that rather than remove the dam, another plan,
known as “Alternative 3,” would involve the removal of some of the dam and
improvements to the fishway.
Then, at a Jan. 31 Town Council workshop, there was another
change. Council President Sharon Ahern told members that when she and other
town representatives attended a preapplication meeting in December, it was
evident that Alternative 3 would not be acceptable to NOAA, the principal
funder.
“It just wasn’t going to be possible, because the parameters of
the grant are very clear that they want, basically substantially increased, I
think it’s fair to say, fish passage, and that is really not what Alternative 3
does,” she said.
Fuss & O’Neill water resources engineer Nils Wiberg proposed a
fourth alternative that would involve lowering the water level incrementally to
determine the impacts of progressively lower levels, but the council declined
to explore that option, instead voting not to renew the Fuss & O’Neill
contract, effectively killing the dam removal project.
A major factor contributing to the council’s decision was the
belief, shared by all six members, that the dam could safely remain in place.
Council member Karen Cioffi said she did not believe the dam was
at risk of failing.
“I’m a lot of things, a skeptic for sure, not an engineer, yet I’m
able to read here that RIDEM says that their dam safety committee says that dam
is currently characterized as a low hazard,” she said.
Other council members agreed.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m done,” Caswell Cooke
said. “I want to get the mill down, and then we’ll talk about the dam.”
But the condition of the dam is largely unknown. RIDEM
spokesperson Michael Healey said low-hazard dams are given visual inspections
only, and the most recent of those visual inspections, which included the
Potter Hill Dam, were done in 2005.
“We do not inspect low-hazard dams because by definition,
low-hazard dams pose no threat to life and only a minimum threat to property,”
he said. “These are visual inspections that do not involve full engineering
analyses of the structural integrity of dams. We do not have the staff or
financial resources to conduct full engineering analyses of all 669 inventoried
dams in the state.”
Wiberg confirmed that there has never been an assessment of the
structural integrity of the Potter Hill Dam.
“They have never conducted a hydraulic analysis to confirm that is
a low-hazard dam,” he said. “They simply determined in the ’90s or early 2000s
that it is a low-hazard dam and they have not determined that a refined
analysis is warranted to determine that it remains a low-hazard dam.”
There is an important distinction to be made between the dam’s
low-hazard state classification and its actual condition, which, in the case of
Potter Hill, is not good.
“There is no functional low level outlet structure,” Wiberg said.
“As a result, if an inspection of that dam were to be conducted, my
understanding is that it would be classified as an unsafe dam. ... The timber
gates on the left side of the dam that are leaking right now and are continuing
to deteriorate, cannot be operated. There’s no operable valve or gate that can
lower the water.”
NOAA restoration ecologist James Turek said it was a mistake to
assume that the dam does not pose a hazard.
“It’s a great deficiency, in my opinion, that people are equating
low-hazard dam classification to ‘there is no significant potential problems
with that dam,’” he said. “It would be foolish. That is not correct. It’s a
terrible assumption and I would highly recommend that the town should complete
a dam assessment to understand the deficiencies that may exist.”
The derelict Potter Hill Mill, on the Westerly side of the Pawcatuck River, and the adjacent dam are in receivership.
As much as the dam removal was supported by environmental groups, riverfront property owners hated the proposal and lobbied vociferously against it, because lower water levels would have impacted riverfront properties, including wells, in both Westerly and Hopkinton. Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, who represents the district, said residents had told him they felt the dam removal was being “rammed through” by environmental groups without consideration of their concerns.
“These other organizations that were helping to supply the grant
money did not want to hear from local people,” he said. “It really is
outrageous that these organizations that deal with environmental issues don’t
want to hear what anybody has to say.”
Kennedy said residents would oppose any lowering of the water
level.
“Trying to maintain it as much as we can so that the water level
stays where it’s at and not make a big change because ultimately, and
especially in the town of Hopkinton, which doesn’t have a lot of waterfront
property, this is waterfront property and those people actually, in their
assessment, pay higher taxes to have waterfront property, as opposed to
wetlands property where they don’t really get an access to the river,” he said.
Further complicating matters is the issue of whether the town will
assume ownership of the mill property, which is in receivership.
Court-appointed special master John Dorsey told the council last
month that the demolition of the mill might still necessitate the removal of
the dam, because the $400,000 for the demolition will be coming from the
federal American Rescue Plan Act.
“Because it’s federal funding, it would trigger something called a
Section 106 review which is a historical review,” he said. “That’s usually
delegated to the state historic agency on behalf of the federal government. We
did have prior site visit with State Historic [the Rhode Island Historical
Preservation & Heritage Commission] to the mill building to explain the
project, explain the different issues that we’re looking at, trying to get some
initial feedback. … The feedback that I got was that State Historic would like
to try and do this project as one.”
Turek said federal permits would require addressing the dam,
because it would be impacted by the demolition of the mill. “I don’t believe
they can possibly say, ‘We’re only going to touch the building and we’re not
going to touch the dam or its components associated with it.’”
Westerly will now refund about $100,000 to NOAA and more than
$20,000 to USFWS. The disposition of the mill property and the requirements of
federal funding, which may include the removal of the dam, are still to be
determined. Turek said his agency would have been willing to work with the town
to explore Alternative 3.
“The partners were never saying, ‘We’re drawing a line in the
sand. If you don’t take the dam out, we’re walking.’ No one ever said that.
There’s been interpretations suggesting that and we also never said we wouldn’t
do Alternative 3,” he said.
The Nature Conservancy, which has contributed $112,500 to the
project for engineering studies, would also have been open to finding a way to
continue the project.
“Even though we didn’t agree with the alternative that the council
was pursuing, we were still willing to continue and provide technical expertise
and figure out is there a way to satisfy upstream interests and achieve the
goal of the grant and the project at the same time,” Conservancy communications
manager Tim Mooney said. “We all expressed willingness to pursue that.”
