State is shifting dam safety to private owners
Joe O’Keefe, state assistant secretary of environmental affairs, admits the state Office of Dam Safety has not been able to keep up with inspecting the estimated 3,000 dams around the state with any regularity. He acknowledges that, as critic and State Sen. Marc Pacheco (D-Taunton) has pointed out in the wake of recent rains, the state isn’t even sure how many dams there are, let alone what condition they are in.
But a new state regulation that recently took effect is supposed to be making headway to fix all that. It shifts the responsibility for assessing and maintaining those neglected dams from the state to some 1,700 companies and individuals who actually own most of the Massachusetts structures.Pacheco warns, and O’Keefe acknowledges, that finding such owners and getting them to inspect, maintain and file regular reports on their dams isn’t going to be easy. The ODS sent out more than 2,500 notices to those they have listed as private dam owners in December requiring that they register with the state. Pacheco says the state only got 125 valid registrants and some 600 notices returned to sender. O’Keefe says his office got more like 1,300 satisfactory replies, is working on the rest and expects to have a rough inventory by July 1.
In the meantime, O’Keefe insists that the state has inspected the most potentially hazardous dams and none pose a public safety hazard. Pacheco disputes that, contending that there’s no way for the state to know safety levels, since the condition and hazard rating of many dams hasn’t been upgraded for years. Pacheco has been vocal in blaming the Romney administration for what he says is its failure to act on a dam safety law passed in 2002.
Stuck — in some cases unwittingly – in the middle of the dam debacle are private dam owners like Worcester real-estate developer Philip Shwachman. A principal in Hopedale Properties LLC, which owns three dams at the site of the former Draper manufacturing complex in Hopedale, Shwachman says he hasn’t heard anything about new dam safety regulations that would require his company to inspect its dams. And he hasn’t received any notice from the Office of Dam Safety.
Shwachman says his company does maintain its dams, which he terms important but not a potential major public safety hazard.
Henry Papuga, manager of the private Milford Water Co., did receive notice from the state on its three dams, including a major one on Echo Lake in Hopkinton, and doesn’t mind complying, even though it is yet another layer of regulation. But, Papuga says, one structure that the ODS deemed a dam is actually only eight feet wide and three feet high. His company, which supplies water to 27,000 customers, will likely remove that structure rather than pay state fees and hire an engineer to inspect it regularly.
Milford Water already inspects its dams — one of which dates back to the 1880s –every week, Papuga says, and they are in good shape.
Under the new regulations, dam owners will be required to hire a civil engineer to inspect dams and file a report with the ODS. Depending on the classification of the dam, follow-up inspections will be from up to every six months to every 10 years. Owners who don’t comply face fines of up to $500 a day.
Companies or owners who want to have their dams removed, something that environmentalists generally support, can get some assistance through the Riverways Program at the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
Getting private dam owners to maintain their dams is a progressive approach to dam safety, O’Keefe notes, that only a handful of other states have adopted. It will shift the ODS’s role from inspector to administrator of the dam reporting process. Inspectors will still face the task of classifying all the state’s dams in terms of hazard potential, tracking down hundreds of dam owners and dealing with what O’Keefe expects will be a substantial number of "orphan" dams whose owners have disappeared or died.
As the process and the public debate over dam safety flows on, there is a point on which Pacheco and O’Keefe agree. "Not having a handle on even where these potential threats exist is just too dangerous for us to risk," O’Keefe says.
Micky Baca can be reached at mbaca@wbjournal.com
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