Dam Owners Ask State Lawmakers for Financial Help

Two state agencies that operate more than two hundred dams recently told lawmakers in Concord that they're running out of money to care for them.

Lee Perry of Fish and Game said taking care of his department's 105 dams has gotten pretty expensive.
the department has been funding approximately 500,000 per biennium for dam refurbishment and reconstruction. this is not sufficient funding to adequately address the necessary needs.

The Department of Environmental Services handles inspection and maintenance of all 273 state owned dams.
Harry Stewart of DES told lawmakers that the maintenance for them used to be funded by hydro electric dams around the state.

But he said that source of revenue isn't really available anymore.

from hydro electric generating facilities at state owned dams we had leases. psnh bought them out. that created a 40 percent reduction in our revenues. and ultimately, in the dam maintenance program, that's a million dollars a year shortfall.

Lawmakers have tried to find a way to raise money for dam repair and maintenance.

They've considered charging a fee on beverages, taxing shoreline property, and even using part of the gasoline tax.

But none of these proposals have the necessary support to become law.

Despite the calls for more money, no official is saying any dams in the state are unsafe.
SFX DAM
Jim Gallagher heads the Dam Bureau inside DES.
what we've learned to do is do more with less with our dam inspection program and focus on the ones that could cause loss of life or property damage if they were to fail.

Gallagher stands on Main Street in Pittsfield in front of the Pittsfield Mill Pond Dam, across the Suncook River.

Photo courtesy James Gallagher, Dept. of Environmental Services

The Pittsfield dam has been around for about 85 years and used to generate electricity.

As Gallagher walked to the top of the dam, he said it had been repaired and renovated several times over its life.

But he also pointed to an area where water ran through side portals, or gates, much like the big dams out west.

He said this area could use some work.
you know the freeze and thaw, we can see some of these components on the dam over here in the gate section here. there's a lot of ice buildup, that works on the concrete. so, yeah, you know over the life of about 50 years , you know these structures have a have a useful life of 50 years so you have to do major reconstruction, major repairs on these things......

The DES Dam team works on state owned dams and inspects all the others in the state, no matter who owns them.

As it happens, there are more than two-thousand, six hundred privately owned dams in New Hampshire.

Most of the big ones that could damage property and possibly harm people are owned by utilities, municipalities, or businesses.

Many of the smaller ones pose no danger to life and limb, and little danger to property.

Some of these smaller dams have been used to create lakes and ponds for recreation.

One of these is Hidden Lake Dam in Stoddard.

These days, the lake is mostly dry.

But it was created 30 years ago by constructing a gently sloping earth wall on one side of a naturally occurring depression.

SX: Rice Brook

A small stream, Rice Brook, flows right in to the dam, and typically provides water for the lake.

But right now the culvert in the earth wall that lets the brook flow through is wide open, because corrugated medal pipe that regulated the flow is sitting in pieces on the ground.

Lou Granpre is the treasurer of the Hidden Lake Association, the dam's owner.
that was part of the siphon. you got a piece there and there's more of it over here. we had to take it out all the way down to the bottom. there's a concrete slab it was settin on originally.

It would cost between forty and sixty thousand dollars to fix the dam.

The Hidden Lake development is a seasonal recreation area, where about 200 families swim and fish each summer.

As he stood near the broken pieces of corrugated pipe, Granpre looked back at the empty lake, and shared his memory of the summer scene.
its a great spot and you'd be su...we have a beach down on that end and we put picnic tables and stuff there in the summer time and an awful lot of people come down here and use it.

Granpre says there's no money in the association's budget to fix the dam, and bring the lake back.

And he says he's asked the state and Senator Judd Gregg for help, but there's no government money available for privately owned dams.

That has little hope of changing in the near future in New Hampshire.

But the state could get help if a measure in Congress gains any traction.

The Dam Reconciliation and Repair Act of 2005 has been in committee for about a year.

There's no word on when or if it will ever get to the House floor.

But if it were to pass, it would make millions of dollars available to states to fix their dams.

A national expert on dams says the federal legislation would help states start to perform very necessary repairs on the 3,500 most potentially dangerous ones.

Bruce Tschantz is professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Tennessee.
whether you're talking about number of dams or whether you're talking about high hazard dams or whether you're talking about the total repair bill. its just a really kind of overwhelming problem that we can't solve all at once that we're going to have to start solving. at least on a year by year basis.

Tschantz says there are more than 90,000 dams across the country.

Only a small percentage of them are potentially unsafe.

Perhaps 15 to 20 a year actually fail, and some of those claim human lives.

Some states have established programs to help private owners get the money they need to fix dams.

Nine states, including Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have established revolving loan funds to help municipalities and other private dam owners.

In New Hampshire, lawmakers have heard from private owners who have asked for help in paying their maintenance bills, which can run into tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Representative David Currier of Henniker chairs the House Resources, Recreation and Development Committee.

He says he's willing to consider establishing a program that makes loans available.
finding a mechanism where they might qualify for low interest loans or whatever to help them repair uh, get it back up to specification, i think that's an admirable thing to do, and i think we should seriously look at that.

At this point, Currier has no idea how much money it would take to set up a loan fund.

Its unlikely New Hampshire would set aside as much money as New Jersey has for its program.

In the Garden state, lawmakers put 95 million dollars into their revolving loan fund.