New Hampshire officials have agreed to spend $4.5 million to remove a hazardous dam in Goffstown.
The Hadley Falls dam was built in 1921. It started producing hydropower in the 1980s, but hasn’t been in use since 2007. The dam is owned by the State of New Hampshire, and officials tried unsuccessfully to try to find hydropower operators to run the dam throughout the past decade.
In 2020, officials found that the dam would likely be unstable during a flood. Then, in 2023, state officials decided to relinquish the license that allowed the dam to be used for hydropower and start the process of removing it.
New Hampshire environmental regulators say removing the dam will restore the natural movement of water in the Piscataquog River watershed and allow sediment and wildlife to flow. The project will reconnect almost 70 miles of river up and downstream of the dam site.
The state’s Aquatic Resource Mitigation fund, which collects money from fees charged when projects make unavoidable impacts to wetlands and streams, will pay for the work.
State officials say that will include removing structures, planting native vegetation, reconstructing part of a stream, and monitoring the site to make sure the site is stable and recovering.
The average age of a New Hampshire dam is 99 years old, and 96% of the state’s dams are potentially hazardous, according to the National Inventory of Dams.
The state owns about 275 dams, and the cost to rehabilitate and remediate them comes to about $414 million, according to a 2024 report. State lawmakers are divided on how to cover those costs.
