New Dam Being Built For Mass. Town

Crews started building a rock dam Friday to replace a decrepit wooden one that nearly collapsed and swamped this town of 50,000 earlier this week.

The new dam was expected to be finished within hours, and the old one, only a few feet upstream, will be detonated Saturday, ahead of a nighttime storm that was expected to bring another 1 to 3 inches of rain.

The 173-year-old Whittenton Pond Dam buckled and starting breaking apart Monday after a weekend of heavy rain, prompting nearly 2,000 people to evacuate their homes.

Residents and business owners began returning late Thursday after millions of gallons of water were pumped from an upstream lake to relieve pressure on the dam.

Officials had planned to reinforce the structure but scrapped the idea after an inspection showed it was beyond repair.

Truckloads of 3-ton boulders began arriving Friday, and crews used an excavator to move them into position about 10 feet in front of the existing dam. The dam will be 8 to 12 feet thick across the 100-foot-wide river, officials said.

About a half-mile away, downtown business owners welcomed back customers. Anthony Lentine estimated his deli lost about $1,000 for each of the three days it was closed, but he did not fault officials in this working-class city south of Boston.

"After seeing what happened in New Orleans, God forbid, we wouldn't want anything like that to happen here," he said.

Besides the storm expected this weekend, remnants of Hurricane Wilma, which stalled Friday near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, could skim the East Coast sometime next week, officials warned.

With the new dam, Rose said, "Whatever comes ... we'll be able to deal with."