NHRC

New Hampshire Bulletin Article by Claire Sullivan

Of the 64 state-owned dams classified as “high hazard” – meaning their failure could result in loss of life – 33 are in poor condition, said the chief engineer of the Department of Environmental Services’ Dam Bureau.

“Each one of those high hazard dams, I mean, the risk associated, if that dam was to fail, there would be probable loss of life,” said Corey Clark, who oversees the bureau. “And here in New Hampshire, a high hazard dam … can be anything from one home being impacted or hundreds or more homes being impacted.”

Fixing New Hampshire’s state-owned dams is an expensive task – one a bipartisan group of lawmakers studying the issue recommended in a November report be addressed through fees. It would take $300 million to rehabilitate all of the high hazard state-owned dams and another $114 million for the others, Clark told the committee. In other words, to get the state’s dams up to standards in the next 50 years, the bureau would need $16 million annually, he said. Right now, it gets less than half that a year.

“Current revenues place the Bureau in a shortfall, extending the repair and rehabilitation schedule to 100 years,” lawmakers wrote in the report. “Considering the age, condition, and growth of development downstream from dams, this is an untenable situation which is poised to deteriorate.”

New Hampshire, unlike most other states, owns a significant portion of dams within its borders, most of which were acquired between the 1940s and ‘60s, the report said. The state owns 276 dams, and is responsible for maintaining and operating 208 of those, according to Clark. Of those, about 111 are owned by DES, 97 by the Fish and Game Department, and the rest by various state agencies and entities, Clark said.

Just five operators oversee those 208 dams, which breaks down to just over 40 dams per person, Clark said. 

“If we have a major flood event … our resources are just stretched,” Clark said. “… We’re competing with every other agency that is trying to get some general funds to keep their agencies going. So it does become a challenge of … trying to maintain these dams, particularly when we have either flooding events or even this summer, the drought we had, trying to maintain those water resources throughout the state becomes challenging.” 

As dams have aged, more people have simultaneously moved into the line of risk. Because of downstream development, the number of dams classified as high hazard has almost doubled since 2004, the report said. The remaining state-owned dams fall into the other risk categories: 34 classified as a significant hazard, 80 as low hazard, and 98 as non-menacing. These categories describe the risk the dams pose in the event of failure, not the actual condition of the dams.

“We’ve not built more high hazard dams, but more dams have been reclassified to be high hazard, therefore increasing the criteria that those dams then have to meet,” Clark said. For example, a low hazard dam must meet standards for a 50-year storm event, while a high hazard dam must meet the criteria for a 1,000-year event. “… So you have a dam that may have been, you know, satisfactory … when it was a low hazard dam (that) gets reclassified to be a high hazard dam. Now it’s in poor condition because, you know, it cannot pass that 1,000-year event.”

The average state-owned dam is more than a century old. Pawtuckaway Lake in the southeastern part of the state has four dams that were built in the mid-1800s, Clark said. Its largest dam has a wooden gate about 25 feet below the water that “hasn’t seen daylight in well over, I think, 40 years,” he said. “So, really if you look at it that way, Pawtuckaway Lake is relying on a wooden gate at the bottom that’s over 40 years old.” And it’s not the only water body relying on decades-old gates, Clark added. The flow gates on Murphy Dam in Pittsburgh are “nearing a century old; unaltered since installation in 1940,” the report said. (The four Pawtuckaway Lake dams are in poor condition, though their hazard classifications range from low to significant to high, according to the National Inventory of Dams. The Murphy Dam is considered high hazard, but its condition is “not rated.”)

The dam bureau operates on about $7.5 million a year, Clark said, but “for us to really dive into that backlog, get these dams to meet current criteria, it’s going to take, likely, another $8 million” annually.

The lawmakers studying the situation – now-retired Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, a Manchester Democrat; Rep. Ron Dunn, a Londonderry Republican; Rep. Mike Ouellet, a Colebrook Republican; and Rep. Peter Leishman, a Peterborough Democrat – agreed unanimously to recommend two new policies to raise funds for dam repairs. 

One would “assess a fee of $1.58 per foot of linear shoreline upon all taxable waterfronts maintained by a state-owned dam,” which would generate an estimated $7.5 million annually from the approximately 4.79 million linear feet of “taxable, eligible shoreline,” the report said. Another funding source would be a $5 fee for boater registration that would go to DES’ dam maintenance fund. That would generate an estimated $530,000 a year, the lawmakers found.

Leishman said he is sponsoring legislation for those fees, and that three Republicans, including the two who sat on the study committee, will be co-sponsors. He said the study committee members weren’t “married” to the shoreline or boat registration fees and are open to other suggestions for how to generate the money. 

“Fees and tax increases generally don’t receive a very favorable vote. If anything, we’ve been, you know, taking taxes away and reducing our revenue,” Leishman said, referencing the interest and dividends tax that goes away at the end of the year. That lost revenue is “a little troubling,” Leishman said, especially in light of the issues with the dams and other infrastructure in the state. 

If lawmakers don’t raise the money, other options might be on the table, he said. 

“Well, we either have to make these repairs and pay for these repairs somehow. We may get some positive feedback,” Leishman said. “Otherwise, we’ll have to start looking at … draining the lakes behind these dams. And I don’t think that would be met with a lot of enthusiasm.” (Clark said the bureau can take the step of draining an impoundment when it finds imminent problems, but that this “very rarely” occurs.)

Many of the state’s most treasured water bodies look the way they do because of dams, Clark said. Without dams, Lake Winnipesaukee could drop by 8 feet, Newfound Lake by at least 6 feet, Squam Lake possibly by about 12 feet, and Goose Pond in Grafton County by 20 feet, he said. 

“A lot of people,” Clark said, “they don’t think about, you know, why is this water here?”