Sanford Mill: Best Place to Live by a Dam Site

The town of Medway invited members of the public to an introductory meeting on the Sanford Mill Pond Dam Alternative Analysis Project Monday night at the Middle School.  At issue is what to do about the aging Sanford Mill Dam, which spans the Franklin-Medway line, has had no known owner since the 1980s and has some immediate issues, but no recent maintenance work and is in unknown structural condition.

The meeting attracted about 35 people, most of whom seemed to be residents of the Sanford Mills condos.

The Town's engineering consultant, GZA GeoEvironmental (GZA),  presented an overview of the current conditions of the dam, outlined the planned tasks and data collection efforts, and answered most of the questions from the audience, including who is paying for their $250,000 project (the state).

Multiple residents talked of their love of the historic site and its water views and wildlife, which might be a thing of the past if the dam is removed -- one of the options being explored in the GZA study which is expected to take about a year. One of the biggest issues is that the dam and the structure of the condo buildings are connected making dam repair, dam removal, or dam failure all issues of great concern to residents.

Linda Donnelly picked up this point and read several key passages from Massachusetts statute Chapter 79, section 20, which, she said, spells out the full liability for damages to adjacent property when a dam is being built, removed, or renovated. She asked whether that risk had been factored into the study and was told it likely would be as the study goes forward.

GZA did acknowledge that a dam removal would likely make the upstream section of the rive less navigable most of the time due to removal of the impoundment but a dam removal would potentially mean uninterrupted navigation over longer stretches of the river they said. 

As to who would pay for any work beyond the current study, that's all to-be-determined...

You can visit www.medwayma.gov/sanford-dam/ for more project information or email the DPW at dpw@townofmedway.org.