To some local residents, the heart of South Natick is the dam and spillway that sit on the Charles River. On Thursday, the town took a hydraulic hammer to it.
It was a major milestone after years of fighting over what to do with a 90-year-old dam that’s been in disrepair for years.
Natick officials got word from the state several years ago: Their dam was in failure. Residents and local officials had been debating the expensive problem for years. Should they repair, or remove, this aging piece of infrastructure?
It was typical of the messy, emotional and bureaucratic conflicts in New England when a beloved local dam falls into disrepair. After years of research, local government meetings and Facebook fights, people in Natick arrived at a decision in late 2022: Get rid of it.
On Thursday, with all the permitting and funding lined up, it finally began coming down.
Kevin Kacavich went to the dam with his daughter, 12-year-old Jordan Kacavich, to watch the demolition on Thursday. She summed up the issue simply.
“If the dam breaks and it floods, it could ruin people’s houses and stuff, and that’s kind of scary,” said Jordan Kacavich. “I feel like they have a good reason for taking it down.
“But the waterfall did look pretty,” she added.
The question — repair or remove? — led to the creation of a town committee and spurred on unusually packed and contentious Select Board meetings. Every piece of evidence gathered seemed to point in the same direction.
There were safety, environmental and historical reasons for taking down the dam. A severely bad storm could cause the dam to fail and lead to hundreds of millions in property damage down river. Dams also block fish passage, degrade the water quality and increase the risk of algae blooms. Natick Nipmuc representatives said they wanted the dam taken down to restore the free-flowing river.
It was the cheaper option, too. There were state and federal dollars available to remove it, but those same funds weren’t available for the more costly process of repairing it. Even if they did fix the dam, town officials knew it would keep eroding, and they would have to fix it again in the next few decades.
On the other side was a vocal group of residents who loved the dam and the memories it held. They loved the sound of the water rushing over the spillway. They canoed in the pond formed by the dam. They slid down the spillway as kids. They proposed to their spouses on its banks.
The dam never had any practical purpose: Officials built it during the Great Depression to create construction jobs. It dammed the river into a pond where residents could swim or canoe.
Today, residents understand the environmental and financial concerns, as well as the risks to life and property if the dam breaks during a storm.
But some think the serene pocket it creates in South Natick is worth the costs.
As Paul Keyes puts it, taking down the dam seemed like the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean he wanted the town to do it.
“I live five houses up here, so I drive over this half a dozen times a day,” Keyes said. On a recent Monday, he decided to buy a coffee, sit on a bench next to a local reporter and savor the time he had left with the dam.
“I’m going to come down here, and I’m going to sit here,” said Keyes, looking out over the dam. “Because I don’t come here often enough to just sit and watch.
“It’s going to be irreversible, and people are going to be very sorry,” he added. “You know, ‘You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.’”
It’s one example of a decision that’s regularly made across New England communities. There are more than 3,000 dams across Massachusetts. Last year, 11 were taken down.
“These are really hard choices that communities have to make. They’re expensive choices. There’s a lot of feelings, there’s a lot of history,” said Jillian Wilson Martin, Natick’s sustainability director. “I’ve been working on it for seven years. We know of other dams that have been struggling to figure out what to do with themselves for 20 years. So, you can get there, and you can get it done.”
Even for people who are excited about what comes next, it’s bittersweet to see it go.
“It’s kind of incredible. I feel weird about it,” Wilson-Martin said. She remembered driving to the dam with her daughter late last month. “On our way home, she said, ‘You know, I’m really going to miss that waterfall.’
“And I relate,” she added. “I’m going to miss that waterfall, too. I live in Natick. I grew up here, and it’s a pretty part of Natick, and it’s something that has been a community gathering point. And I’m really hopeful that, as the river is restored, that this will still be a community gathering point.”
The town has several weeks to finish taking down the concrete spillway. Then Mother Nature will take back the river. It’ll look muddy while vegetation slowly grows in.
“Over the course of the summer,” Wilson-Martin said, “the river will start to reemerge in its natural form and flow freely for the first time in almost 100 years.”
Now, officials are deep in applying for more state grants and to fund new parks on either side of the river.
“We’re hoping to improve the parks that have really aged and haven’t had a lot of investment — like the dam,” she said. “So our goal is to make those beautiful places for people to enjoy and be on the river. And to increase accessibility in those parks, too.”
