TAUNTON, Mass. – Authorities kept a wary eye Tuesday on the battered wooden dam holding back the receding Mill River, as anxious residents held out hope that their homes and businesses would be spared.
Mayor Robert Nunes said Tuesday night that the Whittenton Pond Dam was stable but the situation remained “extremely volatile,” and schools would remain closed today for a second day. He said officials would assess today whether to maintain the evacuations of about 2,000 residents and downtown businesses in the path of a potential 6-foot wall of water if the dam were to fail.
Water levels behind the dam have stabilized, Fire Chief Joseph Rose said, and were a bit lower than they were over the weekend when the river was most swollen.
Engineers eased some of the pressure on the 173-year-old dam by opening the dam’s flood gates while adjusting the flow on another dam upstream.
“As the water level decreases, it will be taking a load off the structure and that’s what everyone is looking for,” dam engineer Matthew Bellisle said.
Nunes said earlier in the day that inspectors and public safety officials monitoring the dam were concerned about “excessive vibration,” coming from a rotted wooden support beam at the base of the dam that was not offering any support.
School was canceled and roads were closed amid fears a collapse would send a wall of water crashing through downtown Taunton, a working-class city of 50,000 about 40 miles south of Boston.
The situation worsened early Tuesday morning as some of dam’s timbers washed away, allowing more water to leak through and under the dam. Officials warned the entire structure could fail.
But as the water level dropped in Lake Sabbatia, the body of water behind the dam, authorities, including Gov. Mitt Romney, who visited the area on Monday and Tuesday, expressed hope that such a tragedy could be avoided.
The dam was sold last summer to new owners, who had written the state last month they were in the process of hiring engineers to restore the Whittenton dam and the Morey’s Bridge dam upstream.
One of the owners, Steve Poelaert, said Tuesday night that work was to have begun last Friday, but was delayed because of heavy rains that led to the present threat.
On Tuesday, Romney ordered the emergency inspection of all high-risk dams in the state. Dams are considered high risk when, “if they were to breach, there would be a significant loss of life or property,” he said.
Water has piled up behind the dam throughout a particularly wet October, reaching its crest late Monday. Taunton has received 11 inches of rain this month, including more than 7 inches from Friday through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
The 12-foot-high dam dates to 1832 and is located near homes and businesses about a half-mile upstream from downtown Taunton. It was originally built to power the adjacent Whittenton Mills textile factory, but it no longer serves any industrial use.
Police and firefighters went door-to-door, urging residents to go stay with relatives and friends or at a Red Cross shelter set up at a high school, where about 93 people were gathered Tuesday night. Dive teams were standing by in case rescues proved necessary.
Lower Main Street was mostly deserted on Tuesday, with shutters drawn and doorways blocked by piles of sandbags. Owner Scott Weyant made some last-minute preparations to his karate studio before getting out, but he doesn’t have flood insurance.
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