Bellows Falls dam impoundment to be drawn down this week

BELLOWS FALLS — Later this week, Great River Hydro, the owner of the Connecticut River hydro dams, expects to begin drawing down the 26-mile long Bellows Falls impoundment in order to make repairs from damage incurred during the flood event of July 10-11.

The Bellows Falls dam's flashboards need to be re-installed, and the drawdown is expected to drop water levels 13 feet in some places, enough to expose shallow parts of the riverbed.

The most dramatic change will be immediately upriver from the dam, said Brandon Kibbe, director of business development and legislative affairs for Great River Hydro, which is now a subsidiary of energy giant Hydro-Quebec.

Kibbe said Monday that the Bellows Falls dam's wooden flashboards were removed and lost in the flood, which took place about two weeks ago. New ones have been built and will be installed once the river drops below the level of the dam. He said there would be no impact from the release of the impoundment downstream, as the release will be very gradual.

He said that Great River Hydro had originally hoped to begin the drawdown during the early part of the week, but a rainstorm on Friday in the northern part of the state made the river rise. He said the project depended on the "really careful coordination" of all the dams on the river.

He said the impact to the fisheries and river habitat behind the dam is being done in accordance with its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license and in conjunction with both state's Fish and Wildlife officials. He said the timing of the drawdown is being timed to the evening, to minimize the heat and drying effect on the river.

He said the drawdown and repairs would take about three days, and would be "most visible" in the river close to the dam. He said The Setbacks, a section of the river close to Bellows Falls and on the Vermont side, would be "fairly exposed," and that Herrick's Cove, a well-known Great River Hydro-owned recreation site in Rockingham, would be "more exposed" than some places.

He said the impact upstream will reach to Weathersfield Bow, a distance of 15 miles, affecting several fishing access and boat landings on both sides of the river. He said Great River Hydro has already closed its boat landings.

Kibbe said Monday that the company has been operating the dam with safety and flood control as a priority in the past couple of weeks, in conjunction with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers, which operate flood control dams on tributaries to the Connecticut. He said the company, in anticipation of the heavy rain, had drawn down its two largest impoundments on the Connecticut, both in northern Vermont, behind the Moore and Comerford dams, in order to create flood control capacity.

He said Moore, which was built in the 1950s, has a 3,500-acre impoundment. He said the July flood was the third most intense flooding, "second only to Irene," which occurred in August 2011. Before Moore was built, he said the Connecticut River flooded in 1927, 1936 and 1938.

He said on average, parts of Vermont received eight to nine inches of rain two weeks ago, on top of saturated ground. While Irene saw rainfall of up to 12 inches, he said, the ground wasn't as saturated as this month's flooding.

He said that without the flashboards, which help create the impoundment in the first place, the river has been running at lower levels than normal and the power generated at the dam has been reduced.

"There's a lot of water in the river right now," he said. "We're thinking the end of the week," he said of the start of the release.

He said the company would be releasing water from its next dam north of the Bellows Falls dam, the dam at Wilder, to lessen the environmental impact. It takes about eight hours, he said, for a Wilder release to reach Bellows Falls.

He said the recent postings on the southern reaches of the Connecticut near Brattleboro and Vernon urging boaters to stay off the river was due to the loss of safety booms at the hydro dam in Vernon. Those booms were lost during the flooding, as were the safety booms at Bellows Falls.

Until those booms are reinstalled, he said, any boaters would not have a safety net at either dam. He said Great River Hydro did not have to pull its flashboards at the Vernon dam.

He said re-installing the new flashboards at Bellows Falls would involve workers in a rubber raft, working up against the dam, with a large crane lowering pieces to them.

He said the workers who will be installing the new flashboards are highly trained individuals.

Contact Susan Smallheer at [email protected].

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