The Mountain Times - Volume 48, Number 47: Nov. 20-26, 2019

The Mountain Times • Nov. 20-26, 2019 LOCAL NEWS • 5
High risk dams needing repair put thousands at risk
By Elizabeth Gribkoff/VTDigger
The Waterbury Reservoir, an 850-acre body of water
shaped like an upside down T west of Route 100, is one
of Vermont’s most beloved spots for boating, fishing and
family swimming.
But the 81-year-old dam, which could put more than
10,000 people and 1,200 buildings at risk if it failed, is
among those highlighted by a recent Associated Press
investigation as being in poor condition in Vermont.
And until last year, state environmental regulators had
limited authority to require dam owners to make needed
repairs.
The AP analysis looked at dams around the country
that are considered a “high hazard” — meaning they
pose a great risk to human safety or property because of
their location — and are in either poor or unsatisfactory
Dunklee’s Pond: The Dunklee Pond dam was a disaster waiting to happen
>
from page 4
He lived on a 20-acre piece farm at
256 North Main St. and said the farms
there had two bridges across the pond
for hayricks to reach the hayfields on
the hillside toward Bellevue Avenue.
Although a dammed pond appears
in the 1869 Beers Atlas, no one knows
when the original dam was built. It is
known that Dunklee’s Pond furnished
ice in the days of home delivery to
the kitchen icebox, and an icehouse
is marked on the Beers map, but ice
harvesting ended during Davis’
mother’s time, and the icehouse
was gone by the ‘50s.
Dunklee’s Pond has never
been considered for inclusion in
any historic registry, according
to Polly Seddon Allen, a consulting
architectural historian specializing
in dams and waterways and based
in Craftsbury Common. Allen is
contracted with the city of Rutland to
comply with Army Corps of Engineers
requirements related to identification
of historic resources. The dam site
may be eligible, she told the Mountain
Times.
Originally from Westfield, Vermont,
she returned in 2016 after
two decades away. Her interest is in
“introducing people to their everyday
landscape ... There are so many layers
in use and development, so many
stories all around us.
“An interesting particularity of this
case,” she said, is that both the pond
and the dam will cease to exist. She
photo documented the dam before
its removal. She is hopeful that some
remaining features may be preserved.
She will be working, under the
aegis of the Vermont Division for Historic
Preservation, with Bill Lovett, the
Rutland Historical Society, Vermont
Historical Society, and local landowners.
Allen asks anyone who has information
or an interest in Dunklee’s
Pond to contact her, Polly Seddon
Allen, at polly.s.allen@gmail.com.
Beyond the immediate objective,
the Purpose and Need Statement sets
further goals of “restoring wetlands,
restoring passage of fish and aquatic
organisms and wildlife, restoring
stream equilibrium and improving
water quality in Tenney Brook. ... This
site will be a great example of how
an urban setting can be restored to a
‘natural’ state and serve as a ‘refuge’
for species moving upstream and
downstream. The aquatic species may
include various insect species, snails,
clams and crustaceans, various minnow
species, brook trout and brown
trout, frogs and salamanders and
snapping turtles and garter snakes,
The dam was in active
failure mode.
etc. ... An online database search indicates
that the Vermont Department
of Fish and Wildlife has no records of
any rare, threatened, or endangered
aquatic species in Tenney Brook.”
Bill Lovett concurs with the positive
future of wildlife as a result of the
stream restoration. “Some people
have expressed concerns about the
animals in the area. If you go up there
now, the same ducks, the geese, the
blue heron is up there, there was
fox and raccoon and probably deer.
Today the place is covered with tracks
[in the mud].”
When Todd Menees and Roy Schiff,
the design consultant for the project,
walked up the streambed to locate
where the stream changed from a
“native channel” to an impoundment
pond, they saw two deer, geese, ducks,
and a great blue heron, Menees said.
After laying out five possible options
and rejecting the first four as too
costly and entailing too much future
maintenance, the Purpose and Need
Statement recommended complete
removal of the dam: “full dam
breach,” which would offer “shortterm
adverse impact for a long-term
gain,” both environmentally and
fiscally.
The report projects a four-phase
timeline: Phase I, dam removal design
with an opinion of probable cost;
Phase II, lining up funding sources;
Phase III, final dam removal (may
condition.
Benjamin Green, section chief of the Vermont Department
of Environmental Conservation’s Dam Safety
division, provided an updated list of 11 high hazard
dams that are either in poor condition or have “significant
operational deficiencies” to VTDigger.
He noted that the list only includes dams regulated
by the DEC, which oversees 415 of the dams, as well as
the Wolcott Dam, which is under Public Utility Commission
jurisdiction. The rest of the state’s 1,087 dams are
either regulated by the Public Utility Commission or the
federal government and 546 are prive and not regulated
by either state or federal authorities.
Green and his predecessor have tallied at least 66 dam
failures since the 1850s. While none have killed anyone,
Dam risk > 6
begin in the summer of 2021 with
a construction period of about two
months); and Phase IV, site revegetation
(may begin in 2021, stretching
through 2024).
Funding for dam removal may be
problematic. Based on the costs of two
comparable dam removals in 2017
and 2018, it’s anticipated that Dunklee
Dam would run about $300,000. The
report points out that costly dam
removals are generally shared among
the dam owner, government, and
nonprofit conservation groups. For
now, the design phase is being 100%
funded by the Vermont Ecosystem
Restoration Program (ERP).
For now, the emergency is over,
Lovett said. “We’re back to that original
timeline, the 3-year removal and
reclamation of the area. The critical
part is over, we don’t have to worry
when it is going to happen because it
won’t. ... The dam had collapsed into
the streambed which was actually
fortunate because most of that rubble
was left there to help regulate the flow
out of the dam and as a result it was
kind of the perfect storm, everything
that needed to happen could happen.”
Although some have mourned the
demise of the pond, many others support
the move, Lovett said, including
the landowners, Snehal and Michelle
Shah, removing the necessity for
eminent domain. Public meetings are
planned to take input, as was done
successfully in resolving the water
quality issue at Combination Pond.
In addition to meeting the goals of
the Clean Water Act, Rutlanders may
well like the outcome from an aesthetic
and recreational viewpoint also.
“When I was a kid that pond was
about 13 feet deep,” Lovett said. “In
the ‘60s and into the ‘70s a lot of fishing
was done. ... Through the process
of restoring the site, the public will
have access to it, they’ll have input
into what is planted, how it is planted.
Mark my words, it’s going to be a
beautiful site. The water is so clear
you can see to the bottom, you haven’t
seen that in a long time up there.”
Annual Holiday Craft Fair
Saturday, November 23 rd
10AM - 3PM
The Gables at East Mountain
200 Gables Place (off of Gleason Rd)
Rutland, Vermont
Featuring more than 25 vendors
Gifts, crafts, jewelry, baked goods, raffles & much more.
Concession area serving lunch.
Table of contents
Local News ................................................................ 2
State News ................................................................. 7
Opinion ..................................................................... 8
News Briefs ............................................................. 10
Calendar .................................................................. 12
Music Scene ............................................................ 16
Rockin’ the Region .................................................. 17
Living ADE .............................................................. 18
Food Matters ........................................................... 26
Pets .......................................................................... 30
Mother of the Skye .................................................. 31
Columns .................................................................. 32
Classifieds ............................................................... 34
Service Directory .................................................... 36
Real Estate ............................................................... 38
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