A dam that once served the industrial ambitions of Springfield, Vermont is coming down, as the town moves to dismantle aging infrastructure that now poses more flood risk than it prevents.
The Springfield Reservoir Dam, located off Wellwood Orchard Road in Weathersfield, just outside Springfield, is slated for full removal. The project is being managed jointly by the Town of Springfield and the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission, the regional planning body serving 10 towns in southeastern Vermont. Earthwork contractors are being sought to handle the demolition and excavation.
The removal fits a pattern playing out across Vermont over the past decade. When Tropical Storm Irene tore through the state in August 2011, killing six people and causing more than $700 million in damage, it forced a reckoning with how aging dams and constrained river channels could amplify flooding rather than contain it. Since then, Vermont has prioritized removing obsolete barriers as a core flood resilience strategy, backed by federal dollars from FEMA's hazard mitigation programs and, more recently, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Nationally, more than 2,000 dams have been removed since the 1990s, with the pace accelerating sharply in the 2020s. Many are structures like this one: built in the late 19th or early 20th century for water supply or industrial power, long since retired from that purpose, but still fragmenting river ecosystems, trapping sediment, and sitting on aging foundations. Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation classifies many such structures as high- or significant-hazard, and the cost of repair often exceeds the cost of simply taking them out.
Springfield, once called Precision Valley for the machine tool companies that defined its economy, has seen that industrial legacy fade since the 1980s. The reservoir dam is another piece of that past. With a population of roughly 9,000 and a median income well below the state average, Springfield relies on regional partners like MARC to administer complex infrastructure grants that the town lacks staff to manage on its own.
Beyond flood risk, removal would restore aquatic connectivity in the watershed, benefiting brook trout and other native species that can't pass through dammed stretches. Vermont Fish and Wildlife has long identified dam removal as a priority for restoring the state's rivers.
Contractor selection is underway, with a bid addendum issued in late January to clarify project specifications. A timeline for the actual removal work has not been publicly announced.
