Temporary dam may rise in Old Mill Pond in Lexington

Lexington town officials are seeking to install a temporary dam in the Old Mill Pond to prevent floods on a low-lying stretch of Main Street during downpours.

The temporary dam will serve as a safeguard, since it will take a few years to rebuild the permanent dam for the pond that has long been a local landmark, officials say.

A temporary wall of rock and soil would divert Twelve Mile Creek running through the pond to its previous path into a spillway able to handle much more stormwater.

“We want to get it back to the place where it should flow,” Mayor Steve MacDougall said.

It’s uncertain how long the placeholder dam would be in place in an 30-acre empty pond full of weeds around the creek.

Bricks, tree limbs and other material left by the flood are scattered next to the former mill, now a complex of two dozen stores and offices.

The plan for a temporary dam developed amid concern about major storms threatening to flood the road again, disrupting traffic through the center of the community.

Nearly 27,000 motorists see the creek flow through a 40-foot hole in the 125-year-old dam daily and continue through a drainage channel under the road that town officials consider inadequate.

Town officials are seeking federal disaster aid to repair the original earthen dam that collapsed during record rain Oct. 4.

Restoring the dam is estimated to cost up to $5 million. Town leaders are waiting to see if federal disaster aid will help pay for the project.

The project also includes cleanup of debris left by last fall’s flood around the privately owned pond and town-owned Gibson Pond upstream.

Cleanup was on hold for months until after a federal assessment of flood damage was finished, MacDougall said.

Town leaders are seeking $750,000 in federal aid that they say is vital to make the temporary dam and cleanup happen.

If that assistance doesn’t come, “what we can do will be a lot less,” town special projects manager Wesley Crosby said.

This story was originally published August 14, 2016 at 9:37 PM with the headline "Temporary dam may rise in Old Mill Pond in Lexington."