The paper trail, the money, and the plan to save the lake.
Everything on the main page in more depth, for lake users, Ashburnham voters, and downstream neighbors who want to help or check our work. Every figure here comes from a document listed at the bottom.
Where things stand · September 2026
Twenty-five years of reports. One canceled project.
The Town has known what is wrong with this dam since at least 2001. Here is the paper trail, from the reference list in the 2024 report and the documents we have obtained.
- 1772
Jacob Ward builds an eight-foot dam at the outlet of a meadow to make a mill pond. The pond becomes Lake Watatic.
- 1938Sept 21
The Great New England Hurricane washes out the dam. The lake drains and stays drained for more than a decade.
- 1954–55
The dam is rebuilt as an earthen embankment with a concrete core wall, 300 feet long and 20 feet high, with a 40-foot concrete spillway. This is the dam standing today.
- 2001Feb 12
Tighe & Bond writes a technical memorandum on repairs for Lake Watatic Dam.
- 2006May 23
GZA GeoEnvironmental performs a six-month follow-up inspection.
- 2009Oct 7
GZA's Phase I inspection includes a breach analysis. It finds a failure here could take out the Lower Naukeag dam and recommends the state classify this dam as High hazard.
- 2011April
GZA prepares the Emergency Action Plan. Its inundation mapping concludes a failure would likely cause loss of life. The plan has not been updated since, though state rules require annual updates.
- 2015Oct 27
Tighe & Bond Phase I inspection.
- 2016
Tighe & Bond begins the damage assessment for a planned repair project. The project is canceled over "significant property ownership challenges." The left half of the spillway is on private land.
- 2022May 11
Tighe & Bond Phase I inspection. Condition: Fair.
- 2024Apr 1
The Select Board agenda lists a vote on a state Dam and Seawall grant application for Lake Watatic Dam. We have not found a record of an award.
- 2024Apr 16
Tighe & Bond Phase I inspection. Condition: Fair. Same fifteen deficiencies as 2022, with "some additional deterioration." All-in repair estimate $3.01 million. Next required inspection: April 2029.
- 2025Aug 22
GZA sends the Town a $392,100 fixed-price proposal to do everything needed before construction: borings, survey, wetland delineation, hydrology, hazard reclassification, an operations manual, alternatives analysis, final design, every permit, bid documents, and the state construction grant application. Its schedule targeted the March 2026 grant deadline. The offer was valid for 60 days.
- 2026June
Lake association members meet with the new Town Administrator. According to a community update later shared with us, he says the Town intends to apply for another grant for permitting. The update does not identify the grant program, application round, procurement path, or local funding source.
- 2026Sept
The next step remains unconfirmed publicly. We are asking the Town to publish which grant it will pursue and when, whether it will negotiate the GZA proposal or issue a new request for proposals, and how it will fund the local share. We will post the Town's answer here.
The other twelve deficiencies
- Trees within 20 feet of the dam and growing out of the spillway wall
- Riprap undersized, rounded, and displaced along the waterline
- Spillway concrete cracked, spalled, and possibly undermined at the toe
- A depression behind the right spillway training wall
- The outlet pipe cracked two feet from its end and possibly displaced
- Beaver debris downstream keeping the toe of the dam under water
- Flashboards held up by wooden braces instead of pins
- Intake structure cracked and spalling; footbridge has no railings
- Emergency Action Plan last updated in 2011
- Left half of the spillway and the land below the dam owned by private abutters
- Only access to the crest is a dirt path through a private driveway
- No stability analysis has ever been run; no drains collect seepage
Opinion of probable cost · Tighe & Bond · 2024
The full cost breakdown.
The engineers split the work in two. The short-range list is cheap and mostly labor the Department of Public Works can do itself. The long-range list is the actual repair: a bigger spillway, a rebuilt outlet, a regraded slope, and drains.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Remove trees and brush within 20 feet of the dam | $70,000 |
| Geotechnical borings, seepage and stability analysis | $25,000 |
| Update the hydrology study and damage assessment | $12,000 |
| Update the operations manual and Emergency Action Plan | $12,000 |
| Repair the crack in the outlet pipe | $5,000 |
| Mowing, riprap, concrete patching, filling burrowsDPW labor | — |
| Short-range total | $124,000 |
| Replace the spillway with a larger one | $830,000 |
| Rebuild the intake structure, gate valve, and bridge | $550,000 |
| Overtopping protection for the embankment | $150,000 |
| Regrade the downstream slope | $100,000 |
| Toe drains to collect seepage | $100,000 |
| Filtered drain at the outlet pipe seepage | $100,000 |
| Erosion protection at the outlet discharge | $50,000 |
| Long-range construction total | $1,880,000 |
| Design and permitting | $284,000 |
| Construction engineering (15%) | $282,000 |
| Construction contingency (10%) | $188,000 |
| Materials and bidding contingency (20%) | $376,000 |
| All-in estimate | $3,010,000 |
Figures from Section 3.7 of the 2024 Phase I report. They assume all work is done as one project. GZA's 2025 proposal prices design and permitting at $392,100, higher than the $284,000 above, because it includes borings, survey, wetland work, and the hazard study the 2024 report listed separately.
How to pay for it.
Massachusetts funds dam work in Ashburnham. It put $1.865 million into removing the Whitney Pond dam. The difference is that the Town asked. These are the programs that fit a repair, in the order we would pursue them.
| Program | What it pays for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Dam and Seawall Repair or Removal ProgramMass. Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs | Grants up to $250,000 for design and permitting and up to $1,000,000 for construction, plus low-interest loans. Applications open each winter and close in March through the ECO One Stop portal. GZA's proposal includes writing the application. | 10% cash match. Access rights must be in hand before applying. Construction applications need a MEPA filing first. Funds must be committed within 24 months. |
| MVP Action GrantMunicipal Vulnerability Preparedness | Climate resilience projects, and a spillway sized for the storms we now get is one. Ashburnham is already an MVP community and used this program for Whitney Pond. Awards run from tens of thousands to several million. | 10% match. Must be framed as adaptation, not deferred maintenance. Same portal, same March deadline. |
| Mass Ready ActState environmental bond bill | The Senate version passed April 15, 2026 with $521.6 million for state and municipally owned dams. Bond bills carry named local earmarks. Ours would be a line: "Lake Watatic Dam, Ashburnham." | Only a legislator can file it. Rep. Zlotnik and Sen. Durant need to hear from constituents, and the Town needs to ask them. |
| Rehabilitation of High Hazard Potential DamsFEMA, administered by the state Office of Dam Safety | Design and construction for non-federal dams. Massachusetts received an $11.4 million allocation for fiscal 2026. | Only for dams classified High hazard. Ours is not, though its engineers say it should be. Reclassifying unlocks this. |
| Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and BRICFEMA, through MEMA | 75% federal share for projects that reduce future disaster losses. Overtopping protection and a spillway upgrade qualify. | The dam must be listed as a mitigation action in Ashburnham's Hazard Mitigation Plan. We should check that it is. |
| Community Project FundingU.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, 3rd District | Congressional earmarks. Massachusetts received $221 million for 209 local projects in fiscal 2026. Towns submit requests each spring. | The Town has to submit it. Competitive, and the request needs a shovel-ready design behind it. |
| Town borrowingProposition 2½ debt exclusion | Bonds the local share outside the tax levy limit. This is how towns fund fire stations and schools. | Two-thirds vote at Town Meeting plus a majority at the ballot box. Needs organized voters. |
| Betterment assessmentMGL Chapter 80, as amended for dams | The Town may assess part of the cost to properties that benefit from a dam, spread over up to 20 years. It is both a funding tool and a way for the lake to show it is not asking the rest of town to carry everything. | Needs a Select Board order and a fair apportionment. Should be paired with grants, not a substitute for them. |
Beyond "wait for the Town"
Seven things the Town could do now.
Do the $124,000 now.
Tree removal, the outlet-pipe crack, the borings, the hydrology update, the manuals. Most of it is DPW labor or small contracts, and all of it is a prerequisite for design anyway. Free cash can fund it at a fall Special Town Meeting. Ashburnham voters spent over a million dollars of free cash at the last annual meeting. This is a rounding error that lowers the risk this year.
Fix the gate valve this season.
A working low-level outlet lets the DPW drop the lake before a hurricane instead of hoping. It is the single cheapest way to make a 1938 repeat less likely, and it needs no permit fight. The engineers rated the outlet "inoperative, needs repair." Ask the Town for a date.
Settle the land first.
The 2016 repair died on property rights, and the state will not take a construction grant application without them. Offer the abutters a permanent easement with the Town paying legal costs and taking on maintenance. If that fails, the Town can take an easement for a public safety purpose under Chapter 79 with fair compensation. Either way it has to happen before anything else, and it can start today.
Ask for the High hazard label.
The Town has been reluctant since 2009 because High hazard means inspections every two years and a bigger storm the dam must be built to survive. But it also moves this dam to the front of the state grant line and opens FEMA's High Hazard dam program. GZA's proposal says so directly. The engineers already believe it is High. Make it official and use it.
Lake families fund the match.
A $1 million construction grant needs a $100,000 local match. If the Watatic Lake Association pledges it, the argument that "the lake people want the town to pay for their lake" is gone. A betterment can formalize the same thing over twenty years. Coming to the Select Board with money in hand changes the conversation.
Put it in the Hazard Mitigation Plan.
Federal mitigation grants only fund actions listed in the town's plan. Getting "Lake Watatic Dam spillway and overtopping protection" written into the next update is a single request to the Town Administrator and the regional planning commission. It costs nothing and it opens a 75% federal share.
Ask the legislature by name.
Bond bill earmarks go to projects that legislators are asked to carry. Rep. Zlotnik and Sen. Durant both have Ashburnham. A letter from fifty constituents and a vote of the Select Board asking for a Lake Watatic line item is how Whitney Pond got its money.
Levers
How we build a coalition that the Town cannot ignore.
Small-town government responds to people in the room. Ashburnham has about 6,300 residents. Ten people at a Select Board meeting changes the meeting. Fifty—including people from the downstream communities this dam puts at risk—changes the budget.
Show up on the first and third Monday.
The Select Board meets at 6:30 pm in the training room at the Public Safety Building. Meetings are broadcast on AWCM. Public comment is at the start. Say who you are, where you live, and ask one question: has the Town signed the design contract, and if not, when. Then come back the next meeting and ask again.
Put it on the warrant ourselves.
Under state law, ten registered voters can place an article on the Annual Town Meeting warrant. One hundred can place one on a Special Town Meeting. Two hundred can require the Select Board to call a Special Town Meeting within 45 days. We do not have to wait for the Town to propose funding the design. We can propose it.
Ask for the paper.
A public records request to the Town Clerk gets us: whether the GZA proposal was signed, the 2024 grant application and the state's response, the 2022 inspection, and every letter from the Office of Dam Safety. The Town has ten business days to respond. We will post what we get.
Go where the budget is built.
The Capital Planning Committee and the Advisory Board decide in the fall what Town Meeting votes on in May. Their meetings are public and almost nobody attends. The dam belongs at the top of the capital plan, and it will only get there if residents ask for it in those rooms.
Write to the people who fund dams.
Our state representative and senator can file a bond bill earmark and can call the Office of Dam Safety. Our congresswoman's office takes community project requests each spring. A short letter that says what the dam is, what the report found, and what you are asking for is enough. Addresses are below.
Write to the paper, and vote.
The Sentinel & Enterprise and the Gardner News cover Ashburnham. A letter to the editor with the 3.2-foot number in it will get read at Town Hall. And one Select Board seat is on the ballot every spring. The next one is in 2027.
Bring in everyone downstream.
GZA found that a failure here may cause the Lower Naukeag dam to fail in sequence. Residents around Lower Naukeag Lake, people along the Millers River, and anyone who relies on the roads and bridges below the dams have a direct stake in this repair. Invite them to sign up, attend meetings, and ask their own officials to support the project.
Town of Ashburnham
State
Federal
A possible schedule
If the Town starts this fall, the lake has a new spillway in 2029.
This is built from GZA's proposed schedule, the state grant calendar, and the permit review times GZA lists. It assumes nothing goes unusually wrong. Every season the Town waits moves every line down by a year.
The June community update is a positive sign, but it did not include enough detail to change this schedule. Until the Town identifies a grant round and procurement path publicly, the dates below remain an advocacy target rather than a Town commitment.
- Fall 2026
Special Town Meeting funds design and the short-range work. DPW removes trees, patches the outlet pipe, and has the gate valve assessed. The Town opens easement talks with abutters.
- Winter 2026–27
GZA drills borings, surveys the property lines, delineates wetlands, and runs the hydrology model. It files the hazard reclassification request with the Office of Dam Safety. 30% design.
- March 2027
Town applies for a Dam and Seawall design and permitting grant of up to $250,000, and files an MVP Action Grant request in parallel. Rep. Zlotnik and Sen. Durant are asked for a bond bill earmark.
- May 2027
Annual Town Meeting authorizes construction borrowing, subject to grants. Debt exclusion goes to the ballot.
- 2027
75% and final design. Permits filed: MEPA notification, Conservation Commission notice of intent, MassDEP water quality certification, Army Corps, Chapter 91, and the Chapter 253 dam safety permit. GZA estimates six to twelve months for the slowest of these.
- March 2028
With permits in hand, the Town applies for a $1,000,000 construction grant. Community Project Funding request to Rep. Trahan's office.
- Summer 2028
Grant awards announced. Project goes out to bid. Contractor mobilizes in the fall low-water season. The lake may be partly drawn down during the work; GZA's design brief tries to avoid it.
- 2029
Construction through the year. New spillway, rebuilt outlet, regraded slope, drains. April 2029 is also the next required state inspection. For the first time since 1955, the report would say the dam can survive the storm the state requires.
For comparison: the Whitney Pond dam was rated "extremely poor" in 2017 and came down in the summer of 2025. Eight years. We would like to do better, and we can, because the studies for this dam already exist.
Sources and documents
Read what we read.
- Phase I Inspection / Evaluation Report, Lake Watatic Dam, Tighe & Bond for the Town of Ashburnham, inspection date April 16, 2024. PDF
- Proposal for Dam Safety Engineering Services, Lake Watatic Dam, GZA GeoEnvironmental to the Town of Ashburnham, August 22, 2025. PDF
- Dam and Seawall Repair or Removal Program, Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
- MVP Action Grant, Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program.
- Mass Ready Act, and the Massachusetts Municipal Association summary of the Senate bill passed April 15, 2026.
- Rehabilitation of High Hazard Potential Dams grant program, FEMA.
- Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
- 302 CMR 10.00, Massachusetts Dam Safety regulations, including 10.13 on owner liability and 10.15 on fines.
- MGL Chapter 39, Section 10, citizen petitions for town meeting articles and special town meetings.
- MGL Chapter 80, betterment assessments.
- Removal of Whitney Pond Dam in Ashburnham, Mass.gov, and the Nashua River Watershed Association project page listing $1,865,000 in awards.
- National Inventory of Dams record MA00004, as republished by Snoflo.
- Ashburnham Select Board and Town Administrator pages, Town of Ashburnham.
- Ashburnham Conservation Trust, which protects Broadhurst Point and provides public access for passive recreation.
- Watatic Lake Association members group, Facebook. The association's history page at wataticlakeassociation.org is the source for the 1772 and 1938 accounts.