Guild Pond could be in jeopardy

About two dozens residents, officials and local politicians came out to the meeting for Guild Pond last Wednesday at the Town Hall Memorial Hall.

The discussion was focused on the $200,000 feasibility study that Tighe & Bond is conducting for the future of the Guild Pond dam, and, by extension, the Guild Pond itself.

Guild Pond has historically been managed by the Norwood Sportsman’s Club, but, crucially, is owned by the Town of Norwood Conservation Department. It is conservation land, and, as such, has a lot of rules and regulations that need to be followed in its care.

The feasibility study was approved at last year’s May Town Meeting and started up this summer. Tighe & Bond Project Manager Candice Constantine said they have basically three options: repair, replace or remove.

“The overarching goal being to identify the preferred alternative for the long-term management of the site and the use of the site for public benefit,” she said, adding that the Town and the Sportsman’s Association need the option to be low maintenance and open space. “When you have a dam in disrepair, there are basically three things you can do. Not doing anything isn’t really an option. If there are portions of the dam that are salvageable, you repair or rehabilitate the portions in bad shape. You can also replace the dam with a new structure that has a longer lifetime, or you can remove the dam and restore the natural flowing stream through the site.”

Constantine said though Tighe & Bond was not there to make a recommendation, the cheapest option would be to remove the dam and let a natural stream flow through.

The night featured a workshop portion where residents put stickers on items they would like to see. Only one person put a sticker on removing the dam.

Almost all residents who spoke during the question and answer session spoke in favor of keeping the dam, either through repair or replacement. Tighe & Bond Engineering Lead Daniel Hammerberg said if that were to happen, they would want to keep it in the same place to reduce the amount of dredging and construction. He added that moving the site of the dam would incur additional review and costs due to the impact of such work on the conservation land.

Assistant Town Planner, former Conservation Agent and Norwood resident Ilex Jones said they were concerned also about the price tag of keeping the dam.

“One concern is the ongoing cost of maintenance and the initial capital investment,” they said. “The second concern is that there would continue to be sediment accumulation in the pond because of the dam affecting the pond’s depth. Dredging is always expensive and very difficult to permit.”

Constantine said Tighe & Bond has done several dam removals over the years, and said generally the pond reverts back to a free-flowing stream with the associated fish and wildlife.

However, Guild Pond has traditionally been used by the Sportsman’s Club to teach young children to boat and/or fish, and that use would be largely lost.

As stated previously, most residents at the meeting spoke in favor of keeping the pond and the dam for this reason.

Resident Mark Leroux said he fishes and boats there all the time and is concerned that he will lose that access as an abutter.

“In my experience, any time they remove something like that, my access to it pretty much dies off,” he said.

Resident Jennifer Grande said she’s an abutter and neighbor of the Sportsman’s Club and said she loves having the pond there.

“The Sportman’s Club has done an amazing job of maintaining the pond and the surrounding areas so folks can access it, and if the pond wasn’t there I’m not sure they’d be so inclined to take care of the property as well as they have been taking care of the property,” she said. “I think we should be mindful that they’ve maintained this for decades and decades for our families, children and community, because without them, we’re going to get West Nile mosquitoes and all those yucky things. And for us – my family and my neighbors on Lancelot – we all want to see that the pond stays.”

Selectman Michael Saad said the pond has been instrumental in the Club’s efforts to bring young people into a relationship with the great outdoors.

“We’ve taught over 6,000 young kids in that community to learn how to fish and enjoy fishing,” he said.

Saad added that in the 90s, they were able to dredge and create Hawes Pond.

“For zero dollars,” he said. “We had a bunch of volunteers with shovels and backhoes. It can be done for a low rate. Guild is a too valuable an asset to the Town to lose.”

Current Selectman and former Conservation Commission meeting member Cheryl Doyle said she felt the dam removal that took place relatively recently at Traphole Brook/Mill Pond/Pezwick Park (the area has a lot of names) resulted in such high vegetation that it’s not easy to access for fishing or other recreation.

“You couldn’t access the water,” she said. “And there were mosquitoes like you would not believe.”

Conservation Agent Carly Rocklen defended the idea of a stream, noting that the removal of the Dam at Mill Pond and Pezwick Park created a brand new recreation area for residents, as well as a cold water fishery for trout.

“We’ve had busloads of kids come to that park to study the stream there,” she said. “That’s also functioning as an educational resource. It’s lovely to walk along the path. At Endean Park there is an area where you can walk along the edge of Hawes Brook, which is lovely. I think it’s just about how a park is designed.”

Jones said their one regret about the Pezwick Park is that it was only designed as an ecological resource, and public benefit was not taken into account as much. They said, for instance, that accessible parking and access should have been considered.

“I think that’s a weakness of that project that it was solely an ecological restoration project and didn’t have improvements to access in that conservation area,” they said.

Resident and Trails Committee Member Vic Babel voiced his support for creating a loop trail around Ellis and Guild regardless of what happens to Guild. He said also that he never knew the pond was conservation land, and always thought it was owned by the Sportsman’s Club.

“I always thought that was private land and that if I walked into that Sportsman’s Club I would be arrested or whatever, so I never realized it was conservation land,” he said.

Conservation Commission Chair Catherine Walsh emphasized that Tighe & Bond are providing options, as well as cost estimates for those options, and added that a dam replacement is likely to be very costly, both in terms of upfront investment and maintenance.

“We have to figure out how we get the capital money to do that,” she said. “I can tell you right now, Conservation doesn’t have that kind of budget, so we’ll have to go to the Town. What I worry about – if we’re talking repair or replacement – is that we’re not talking about $100,000. We’re talking about millions of dollars. We’d have to go to Town Meeting for that.”

Walsh noted that the Town is facing an operational override for fiscal year 2028 or ’29. She said if that’s the way folks want to go, they have to make sure that accessibility and publicity for the pond is increased so that all of the Town can get the most bang for their buck.

The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for February, when Tighe & Bond will come back with options and cost estimates. For a copy of the presentation materials and more information on the project, go to https://gvimes.link/cncmnws