Dover-Foxcroft stares down massive tax hike to maintain ailing dam

By Emmett Gartner, The Maine Monitor

Residents in Dover-Foxcroft could see their property tax bills increase by hundreds of dollars each year if the town commits to maintaining its ailing dam on the Piscataquis River to federal standards, officials said at a meeting in early February.

The projections provide the clearest details yet of the consequences of a townwide vote in June, when voters rejected plans to remove the Mayo Mill dam. Removing the dam would likely have been funded with outside grants; town officials say there are likely far fewer outside funding opportunities available for ongoing maintenance.

The dam has been out of compliance with federal regulations for years, and mounting pressure from regulators means that Dover-Foxcroft will likely have to commit to the costs of repairs by the end of the year, according to the town dam committee’s Feb. 4 presentation, or risk thousands of dollars in daily fines.

The committee is tasked with providing recommendations for the dam’s future to the Select Board and was reconfigured with a slate of new members after the June referendum. Its chair, Select Board member Stephen Grammont, provided a stark warning to attendees at the start of the committee’s February meeting.

“There is no way of avoiding this: the numbers you’ll hear about are very large,” Grammont said. “I have to emphasize that if you find the numbers scary, it’s because they’re scary, not because we are deliberately trying to scare people.”

The dam hasn’t produced electricity or had any major repairs in more than 18 years, and its deteriorating fish ladder doesn’t meet federal standards for endangered species like Atlantic salmon, which has historically spawned upstream in the Piscataquis River’s headwaters.

The committee voted in December to recommend not restoring its power-producing capabilities after a fresh engineering study estimated that its operation and maintenance costs would exceed any electricity revenue, narrowing the committee’s focus to repairs. 

Without outside funding, maintaining the dam to federal standards would run the town just under $10 million, including $6.6 million to repair the structure itself and nearly $3 million to upgrade its passage for migrating fish. None of the identified projects would mitigate the heightened flooding that the dam causes upstream.

The total cost balloons to more than $16 million when factoring for yearly interest accrual on a 25-year bond, and Grammont was quick to stress that’s likely an underestimate given rising construction and materials costs.

“They’re not something you can count on being accurate,” Grammont said. “And as everybody knows, costs have been going up increasingly and suddenly.”

The town would rely on a sizable property tax increase if it self-finances the project, causing a Dover-Foxcroft resident with a $350,000 property valuation to pay an additional $679 per year over the next quarter century.

Although members of the dam committee are skeptical of the dam’s ability to attract government or private grant awards for its repairs, they have identified 10-15 grants that the fishway project and removal of the dam’s powerhouse could be eligible for.

To have a shot at winning those awards, however, the town needs to first develop an engineering plan, which it hasn’t started.

Meanwhile, a Feb. 10 deadline for one of those grants has already passed, and the clock is ticking for the others.

“These grants range from a few thousand dollars to … millions of dollars,” committee member Sandy Perkins said. “Again, there’s no guarantee that we get any of these grants. They’re all competitive. We have to have a plan, and that plan has to be finished.”

The town previously worked with The Nature Conservancy and Atlantic Salmon Federation when it weighed dam removal. Both nonprofits have spearheaded dam removal and fish passage projects in Maine, and officials with The Nature Conservancy said the organization is standing by as Dover-Foxcroft weighs its options.

“The Town of Dover-Foxcroft has been leading a thoughtful, transparent community process to identify their best path forward for the Mayo Mill Dam,” said Eileen Bader Hall, freshwater restoration manager for The Nature Conservancy in Maine. “If that path leads them back to considering dam removal and river restoration, we stand ready to partner with them to help plan and implement a solution.”

Meanwhile, common federal funding options for fish passage through agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could be the next allocation axed by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The New York Times reported Monday that administration officials informed NOAA staff members to search their grants for terms that include phrases like “climate science” and “environmental quality,” sparking concern among lawmakers and former NOAA officials that those grants are at risk.

Should Dover-Foxcroft win enough funding to cover both fish passage costs and the removal of the dam’s powerhouse structure, that could drop the maintenance price tag by more than $3 million and property taxes by a couple hundred dollars.

The committee’s findings were met with mixed reaction from attendees, who wanted more information on available funding opportunities and questioned whether it would be possible to reconsider dam removal, which is still on the table and up to the Select Board and town, according to committee members.

A handful of attendees lamented the tax burden the project would create, especially for lower-income residents, while another said the town shouldn’t ignore the hit on property tax revenues that could accompany dam removal and a lower river.

“There are many people in this town that it would be a hardship for, and we’re talking 25 years for that amount,” one said. 

Another added, “I am not eager to be spending more in tax money for something that is a recreational opportunity for some, but not for most people in this town, and everybody will be required to pay that excess.”

Unless the town reverses its course on dam maintenance, however, those tax increases are likely on the horizon. 

Dover-Foxcroft officials now have to negotiate another extension with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for its dam license, then quickly put out bid requests for engineering designs and a consultant to guide the town through the licensing process with federal regulators.

The town won’t qualify for grant opportunities until then, and deadlines are fast approaching.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.