But, as it is known, Dudleyville Pond has become more of a burden than a source of joy for the Brown family. The old stone dam at one end has long since fallen into disrepair. For the past few decades, the pond has only been partially filled, and it’s been years since rowboats floated and swallowed fish hooks. Regulators warned that what was once a shining gem on the Brown property was now a public safety hazard: If the dam failed, the resulting flood could wash out a road downstream and flood neighboring properties.
Centennial Dudleyville Reservoir is one of hundreds of dams in Massachusetts that state inspectors have declared unsafe or in poor condition. Brown’s options were to repair it, which could cost at least a quarter of a million dollars, or tear it down.
Lois Brown recalled her years by the pond and dam where she still lives.
(John Tomaki/Globe Staff)
Brown played in the pond at Shutesbury in 1952.(brown family photo)
This is typical: projects to repair or remove dams are very expensive, and about 40 percent of dams in the United States They are not owned by the government, but by property owners, many of whom usually don’t have the money or time to maintain them.
Removing dangerous dams is a key priority for Massachusetts as it prepares for the dangers of climate change. Lawmakers worry that dams built decades or centuries ago may not be strong enough to withstand more severe floods.
The Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game plans to remove 11 of the state’s more than 3,000 dams by 2030. The Commonwealth has the fifth-highest dams per mile in the nation, according to the department.
Dudleyville Pond Dam was built over a century ago to provide power for a sawmill. The mill is long gone, but its legacy as a power source was revived in the 1980s when Brown’s brother, David, outfitted the dam with a turbine to generate electricity for his barn and cabin.
While moving forward with elimination is a victory for the state, the Brown family is the victory sad Yes, the 8-acre pond was man-made. However, it feels unnatural to remove it and see all those memories of ice skating and fishing by the beach.
Brown said he misses sailing the most. Dusk was the best time to go: his rowboat carved a path through the mist and the setting sun, the smooth, dark water beneath his feet.
And at night, when the fog rises and rotates under the stars in the moonlight, the pool of love rains.
“That’s where we know the pond isn’t coming back,” Brown says.
About 30 years ago, the Brown family began receiving letters from the state Department of Dam Safety warning them the dam was a public safety hazard. Over the years, those warnings turned into threats of $500-a-day fines, Brown said. It soon became a source of significant stress for Brown, a social worker, and her brother David, 76, a hospice care worker.
“The cost to fix it was just out of our league,” he said.
David Brown attempted to repair the dam itself in the early 1990s. He excavated parts but could not finish the work due to the permit and the complexity of the project.
An engineer with experience repairing such dams told the Globe that the cost would likely have been close to $1 million, including permits and design plans.
Brown asked regulators: What should I do?
He reasoned that even if the government seized his house, no one would sanely buy a property with such a huge liability.
If the dam fails during a storm, the road connecting the neighborhood could be washed out and property downstream could be damaged, said Chris Hirsch, director of the dam removal program for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Restoration. A flood can even kill someone.
Already, a downstream neighbor has told regulators that their home is flooding during heavy storms.
“He’s like a regular guy, and dams are very, very expensive to build and maintain,” Hirsch said of Brown.
In addition to the dilapidated dam, a culvert under the road on the other side of the dam is too small, putting the road at risk of bursting. During a storm
It was like getting into your car and saying, “Wow, the tires are all over the place, and the engine is dying, and I’m going 128.” [miles per hour] Around Boston. “It’s not a winning combination.”
The 17-foot dam loomed larger and larger in Brown’s mind.
He studied engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Can he give them the dam? He thought he could create a real engineering project for some enterprising students, but no one took him up on the offer.
He prosecuted state representatives. He said they called for information, but were eventually told there was nothing they could do. The dam was considered unsafe and was raised to Brown to do something about it.
Eventually, an environmentalist friend suggested Brown investigate removing the dam and told him about the potential benefits to the ecosystem: native fish species could run freely in the Sawmill River along which the dam was built. is to move Birds rely on wetlands, and those wetlands act as sponges for flash floods.
In the last two years, the Bishsawars built a dam for themselves in the semi-drained pond and diverted the water behind a An empty space that was once dug in one of the attempts to repair the dam. That made the dam’s problem that much more urgent, experts said.
“If you had a big storm, [the water] That could potentially flow into that void, Hirsch said, and then weaken the foundation of the dam and cause the dam to fail.
The state issued an emergency removal order, bypassing many of the lengthy and costly permitting processes. To fund the removal, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Restoration, US Fish and Wildlife, the Connecticut River Conservancy, local chapters of Trout Unlimited, and other nonprofit organizations worked together to raise $118,000 in various grants to cover the costs of the removal. provide emergency .
Permitting and designing a dam typically takes three to five years and costs millions of dollars, engineers said. This one happened within a few months and cost little.
Last week, the dam was removed from the riverbed with an excavator. What is left behind is a puddle of mud, tall, slimy grass, and a crane circling around in the puddles. It’s a far cry from the cool idol scene Brown grew up with.
Still, Brown said he’s looking forward to improving the ecosystem.
“It helps reduce the damage,” he said. “It looks like we’re doing the right thing.”
Erin Douglas can be reached at erin.douglas@globe.com. follow him @erinmdouglas23.