Hardwick, Vermont has been flooded twice in two years. Now the small Northeast Kingdom town is taking its first engineering step toward removing one of the aging dams that locals increasingly see as part of the problem.
The Caledonia County Natural Resources Conservation District is seeking engineers to develop a conceptual design for removing Jackson Dam, a century-old structure. The work is preliminary, a 30% design phase that will include site surveys, sediment analysis, hydraulic modeling and cost estimates, and no final decision to remove the dam has been made. But it marks a concrete move toward an outcome that river managers and conservationists have been pushing for across Vermont.
Hardwick (population roughly 3,000) sits on the Lamoille River in Caledonia County, a rural and economically strained region. Downtown businesses were inundated in July 2023. They flooded again in July 2024. Recovery from both events is still ongoing. Against that backdrop, aging mill dams that once powered a granite industry no longer serving any economic purpose look less like heritage and more like liability.
Source: NationGraph.
Scientists and river managers have long argued that dams like Jackson amplify flood damage: they trap sediment, alter river channels and can fail catastrophically under pressure. Removing them allows rivers to move as they naturally would, reducing the surge that overwhelms roads and buildings downstream. Dam removal also restores fish passage for native brook trout and reconnects the sediment flows that healthy river ecosystems depend on.
Vermont accelerated this work amid the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, which killed six people, damaged more than 500 miles of roads and caused an estimated $700 million in damage statewide. The floods of 2023 and 2024 reinforced the urgency. The state now maintains an inventory of high-hazard and derelict dams, and funding from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has directed billions toward habitat restoration and dam removal nationwide. Eighty dams came down across the country in 2023 alone.
Jackson Dam is one of an estimated 1,200-plus dams in Vermont, many of them built for mills that closed generations ago. As covered in earlier reporting on the project, conversations about its future have been building since the back-to-back floods hit Hardwick.
The engineering study will determine whether removal is technically and financially feasible. If it is, a full design and eventual construction would follow, likely on a timeline of several years.
