Forguites: With no sale, it's time to act on dam

The overwhelming decision by Springfield voters to hold on to the Weathersfield reservoir means the town will investigate either repairing the dam or notching it, Town Manager Robert Forguites said Wednesday.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100304/NEWS02/3040349/1003/NEWS02            # # # # Forguites: With no sale, it's time to act on dam Rutland Herald • By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: March 4, 2010 • SPRINGFIELD – The overwhelming decision by Springfield voters to hold on to the Weathersfield reservoir means the town will investigate either repairing the dam or notching it, Town Manager Robert Forguites said Wednesday. • Voters rejected two separate articles at town meeting calling for selling the two pieces of property the town has owned in Weathersfield for decades, the second time the town has rejected such a sale in recent memory. • The reservoir decision could have played a role in the defeat of board Chairman Mark Blanchard, who supported the sale of the reservoir, and who stood outside the Springfield polls Tuesday with a large sign urging voters to sell the dam. • Blanchard's challenger, Stephanie Gibson, opposed the sale of the dam, and swept the two-term Select Board member out of office, 1,087 votes to 884 votes. • The dam and reservoir off Wellwood Orchard Road has been neglected in the past several years, letting brush grow up on the dam face, according to Steve Sysko, a longtime supporter of the town keeping the reservoir. • Sysko believes the reservoir should be kept as a backup drinking water supply in the event that something happens to the town's well fields in Chapman Meadows, off Fairground Road. • Forguites said the town would now have to see if it was possible to fix the dam and whether there were state or federal funds available to help. • The reservoir, once the town's source of drinking water, has become a sore point with state regulators, who have told the town that something more definitive needs to be done. The town has kept the water level behind the dam at reduced levels, to lessen the chance of a breach or flood. • "I'm glad we put it to a vote," said Forguites, who wasn't town manager in the mid-1980s, when the issue was last voted on and debated. Townspeople then appropriated about $100,000 to fix the dam. The money has never been spent. The 87 acres of land has been logged once or twice in the past 20 years. • "It's created a considerable amount of discussion," said Forguites, referring to Monday's town meeting floor meeting, where most of the discussion revolved around the reservoir and dam. Not a single question was asked about the $9 million town budget, Forguites noted. • The dam as it now exists could be a potential liability, the manager said. He said that he plans on investigating the possibility of state or federal funding to help with its repair. • "We can't continue without doing something there," he said. • The vote to sell the reservoir and bulk of the land was defeated 1,530 to 539, and a second related article to sell a much smaller piece of property was also defeated, 1,439 to 670. •