PHILLIPSTON – The Community Preservation Committee will meet next Monday to discuss the applications it has received for Community Preservation Act funding – including $700,000 to rehabilitate the Bates Powers Dam.

If approved, the request from the Phillipston Selectboard would use half of the estimated $1.4 million in the CPC account. Chief Administrative Officer Peter Morin and Selectboard member Melanie Gough authored the grant, and Gough said she intends to be at the Jan. 13 meeting to advocate for the funding.

During several Selectboard meetings in late 2024, the Selectboard and residents had discussed the possibility of seeking CPC monies – somewhere in the vicinity of $75,000 – to fund an engineering study to learn the feasibility of refurbishing the 149-year-old dam. Gough said that in discussions with Morin, it was decided that it would be more realistic to apply for a larger amount.

“We need to keep in mind all the costs,” she said. “That includes the cost of acquisition and the cost to rehabilitate the dam, among other things. Peter ran the numbers and spoke to people who have done projects like this in the past, and that’s the number that he thought would be the best moving forward.”

Morin told the Athol Daily News, “What the ultimate goal is, is to acquire the dam. Incrementally, the aspects of that include getting an assessment of the current condition of the dam, getting it into a state of repair that makes it safe, and then to get an idea of what recurring maintenance costs might be.”

Morin said that last item – maintenance costs – would not be covered by the $700,000 grant.

“The Community Preservation Committee,” Morin continued, “can choose to fund the entire amount or any portion of it. In my experience doing community preservation requests, you identify all of the costs and let them determine what they think are appropriate for approval.”

The dam, constructed in 1876, and the reservoir it created sits entirely within the boundaries of Phillipston, but is owned by Athol. The state Division of Dam Safety has classified its condition as “poor” and hazard potential classification as “significant.”

Before composing the grant application, Morin contacted Stuart Saginor, the executive director of the Community Preservation Coalition.

“I talked to him about the appropriate categories for CPC that (the dam) would fall under, and he said it would fall under open space acquisition, because what you’re really doing is acquiring land that would be for passive recreation,” Morin said. “Advocates can also see it as having historic value, but it’s less historic than it is open space; conservation for the use of passive recreation that would probably have to have a conservation restriction placed on it.”

Morin said he followed Saginor’s advice regarding wording of the application, then addressed the issue of cost.

“We’ve got to identify what the costs of the engineering assessment would be; we’ve got to still identify what the cost of dam repair would be; and then we would put in a placeholder number for the cost of acquisition,” he said.

Morin said the cost of demolition is estimated to be approximately $1.5 to $2 million. He examined some national data to come up with the likely cost of rehabilitation and came up with a range of $360,000 to $390,000.

“So I used the national data to determine what the cost of repairing dams of similar sizes and ages would be,” he said. “The cost for an engineering study, in my experience, would be in the $100,000 range. So, I put that number in the application and then put in money for acquisition [of the dam] from [Athol].”

Morin said the momentum in Massachusetts is toward the removal of dams “because of fish migration and things like that. The impetus is toward removal, but I also know that the Selectboard is interested in exploring the viability of acquisition and just figuring out what the benefits and costs would be.”

Other costs folded into the CPC application, Morin said, includes monies to provide access to the dam and reservoir.

“The dam is landlocked right now,” he said. “So, we’d have to get an easement or right-of-way or some other way to get to the property from Phillipston.”

The Community Preservation Committee meeting on Jan. 13 gets underway at 6:30 p.m. in the meeting room at the Town Annex, 15 Templeton Road.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.