Lately, though, he and his staff have been hearing a lot about one particular Army Corps property: Townshend Dam. And the conversations have not been easy, with town officials joining state and federal legislators in raising economic and environmental concerns about the site.
Fedele said the Army Corps, after hearing from Vermont’s congressional delegation over the past few weeks, is trying to find money for a dredging project to temporarily alleviate sedimentation issues at the dam’s swimming area. But he made no guarantees, citing a tight budget both regionally and nationwide.
“We have limited dollars,” Fedele said. “(Townshend Dam) is still funded for recreation. We are still trying to do everything we possibly can for recreational opportunities there.”
The 55-year-old Townshend Dam is part of a network of flood control projects built by the federal government. As of 2014, the Army Corps estimated the dam had prevented more than $141 million in downstream flood damage.
But there have been some significant ripples in recent years. One ongoing issue is the relatively small payment in lieu of taxes that Townshend receives via the Connecticut River Valley Flood Control Commission for hosting the dam.
Another complaint is that Townshend Lake seems to be slowly disappearing due to excessive sedimentation — a problem that significantly hurts recreational activities at the dam but isn’t seen as interfering with flood prevention.
“The way it is currently operated and maintained, there is no recreation,” said Bob DeSiervo, a Townshend Planning Commission member who lives near the dam. “You can’t boat there, you can’t fish there, you can’t swim there.”
It is more than a quality-of-life issue: Because fewer people are traveling to the once-popular recreation area and to Townshend State Park, local officials say they’re seeing economic impacts.
“What we’re trying to do is to get (the lake) back to the original way it was promised to the town and the people who use the facility,” DeSiervo told Fedele.
He also expressed frustration at what some perceive as a fatalistic attitude toward the lake’s demise. “There doesn’t seem to be any interest in making it a recreational area again,” DeSiervo said. “Everyone throws up their hands and says, ‘It is what it is.’”
Fedele doesn’t see it that way. For one thing, he pointed out that Townshend still has recreational facilities and attracted nearly 34,000 visitors in 2015 — though locals contend that’s a fraction of past visitation.
Officials also note that the Army Corps has worked to keep Townshend’s swim area open, investing about $28,000 in an excavation and dredging project in 2013. Two years earlier, after Tropical Storm Irene’s floodwaters swept through the area, “that beach was silted up so that, if you did go in there, you’d get stuck in the mud up to your knees,” Fedele said.
But the excavation’s benefits were short-lived. During a November meeting at the dam, an Army Corps official estimated the average depth in most of the lake was just 1 to 2 feet.
Irene-related erosion problems upstream are “still contributing to downstream flow of sediment, and it’s ending up in that pool behind Townshend Dam,” Fedele said. “So, we got two years out of that beach cleaning (project), and it’s filled back up again.”
But DeSiervo argued that such work may be too far in the future. “We need to get something done, and it can’t be 50 years down the road when all the banks eventually get vegetated and stabilized,” he said.
The members of Vermont’s congressional delegation, who have pledged help for Townshend, apparently feel the same way. “The Corps has been in discussions with them,” Fedele said. “Over the last two weeks, we’ve had two calls with them. They’re asking, ‘What is it we can do?’”
As a result, Fedele said, officials are trying to determine whether they can “reprogram” funding within the current Army Corps budget to attempt a new dredging project at Townshend. If it happens — and Fedele stressed there are “no promises being made” — it may be a relatively small-scale project similar to the 2013 excavation.
“If we can do this again — if we had some funding to do this again — we’re looking at what’s available,” Fedele said.
But there doesn’t appear to be much wiggle room in the Army Corps budget. Fedele said the regional spending plan for fiscal year 2015 was $3.5 million less than in fiscal year 2012.
“We have 50- to 60-year-old infrastructure now, so there’s a lot of maintenance that we’re trying to do to stay on top of it,” he said. “But, given our stable or declining budget, it becomes more and more challenging.”
Furthermore, a budget breakdown for the New England region shows that the Army Corps’ emphasis is not on recreational areas. Recreation is the third-largest budget line item at $4.9 million but is far outpaced by navigation ($12.9 million) and flood risk management ($25.7 million).
Townshend’s sedimentation issues, Fedele said, have no significant impact on the dam’s floodwater storage capacity.
“These projects were built for flood risk management,” he said. “That’s our primary mission.”
