In her August 21 email newsletter, Mayor Ruthanne Fuller urged City Council leadership to hold a vote to approve the City’s project to repair the Bullough’s Pond dam at the Council’s upcoming meeting on September 2. However, City Council President Marc Laredo has said that, given the City Council’s normal process, he anticipates a vote will be taken at a later time.
In 2018, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Office of Dam Safety (ODS) issued a Dam Safety Order to the City, requiring Newton to conduct a thorough inspection of the dam and bring it into compliance with State regulations.
In the almost eight years since ODS began investigating the dam, the project has been assigned to two different consulting firms, and Newton residents have raised numerous concerns about their respective proposals. While the issue has been discussed in several meetings of the City Council’s Public Facilities Committee, a vote approving any particular proposal has yet to be taken.
The Fuller Administration is recommending a proposal developed by consulting firm GEI Consultants. It would armor the downstream slope of the dam, with the goal of allowing the dam to overtop (water flowing over the top of a dam) in the event of a major storm without breaching (a break). The proposal would also remove 199 trees from the dam and surrounding Laundry Brook forest. The City would replace the trees slated to be removed and, according to Mayor Fuller, “improve the Bullough’s Pond park area.”
In her August 21 email, Mayor Fuller characterized the state of the dam as an “urgent safety issue.”
“After eight years of exploring potential solutions, we need the City Council’s leadership to move forward and allow us to make the much-needed repairs,” she wrote. “Bullough’s Pond Dam is a vital piece of Newton’s infrastructure and it is in critical need of rehabilitation. The City has done its due diligence. The recommended repair plan …is feasible, effective, and urgently needed.”
Kathleen Grieser, a member of the City’s Dam Working Group and Vice President of the Bullough’s Pond Association, expressed a different view, indicating that the City should take the time to implement the best possible solution. She said that Mayor Fuller’s current proposal, in her view, is not acceptable.
“It’s odd that Mayor Fuller is now declaring the Bullough’s Pond Dam an ‘urgent safety issue’, after her administration has neglected to propose an acceptable dam rehabilitation plan for almost eight years. …The people of Newton deserve the safest and least environmentally harmful plan possible. Those of us who serve on the Dam Working Group and in the Bullough’s Pond Association have repeatedly asked for a design that incorporates automated outflow mechanisms, modern weir technology, and a holistic approach to addressing upstream and downstream flows. A properly updated Bullough’s Pond Dam could serve as a flood prevention asset.”
The dam, completed in 1664 by Colonel John Spring, was converted to a concrete-core wall dam in 1926. The dam’s spillway was modestly renovated more than three decades ago, when Bullough’s Pond was last dredged, in 1993. The Bullough’s Pond Dam, though more than 360 years old, has never been breached nor overtopped.
In a statement to Fig City News, City Council President Marc Laredo said that he did not anticipate that a vote regarding the project would be taken at the City Council’s September 2 meeting, which is meant to be an opportunity for all Councilors to become more familiar with the proposal.
President Laredo said that after that meeting, consideration of the project will proceed in accordance with the City Council’s normal process. The Public Facilities Committee will vote on the project at a future Committee meeting, with that schedule determined by the chair of the Public Facilities Committee. The project will then be taken up by the City Council as a whole after it is voted out of that committee.
President Laredo stated that the City Council will look at the issue carefully.
“It’s complicated because the issues extend beyond the dam itself, and include the potential for flooding downstream and how that will be addressed,” he said.
Theo Younkin is this summer’s Fig City News managing student intern, a rising senior at Newton South High School, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the NSHS Lion’s Roar.
