Comment on 1800s-era Maine dam needs robust repair fund

GARDINER — Recent repairs to the Cobbosseecontee Stream dam owned jointly by Gardiner, Litchfield and Richmond mean city and town leaders will need to decide next year whether they can afford to build up the fund to keep the dam in working order. Crews working on the 1800s-era New Mills Dam replaced three wooden posts damaged by ice and installed three new underwater steel gates this fall at a cost of about $70,000, said Jack Daniel, chairman of the dam committee. “It’s draining this massive watershed, and it all comes through here,” Daniel, a Richmond resident, said while standing on the dam Thursday afternoon. The dam, which the three municipalities took ownership of in 2000, creates both Pleasant Pond and Cobbossee Stream –both assets for the communities, Daniel said. “That’s the importance, I think, of the committee’s work; because without the dam, the lake disappears,” he said. The committee will be asking the municipalities to replenish the dam fund in their coming budgets but hasn’t decided yet how much to request, Daniel said.