A DAM MESS

Easy solution continues to elude officials responding to Healy’s Millpond Dam crisis

Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), assigned with maintenance of roads in Middlesex County, looked after all those secondary roads in the county until 2006 when the state agency decided it would no longer maintain a portion of Stormont Road (Route 629) over the dam of Healy’s Millpond.

VDOT said that the dam was privately owned, it was the responsibility of the owner of the dam to repair the earthen dam to secondary road standards and then, and only then, a new road bed would be installed by VDOT.

The late Gene Ruark who owned the dam in 2006 refused to fix the dam, stating VDOT had maintained the road and the dam since 1932 and he did not feel it was his responsibility. The Middlesex County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) was told by a judge they could not force Ruark or VDOT to fix the dam or road because the county “lacked standing in the matter.”

As late as 1999 when Hurricane Floyd damaged the road and dam, VDOT fixed it, but in 2006 when the spill-box culvert on the dam failed a six-month VDOT inspection, the agency said the responsibility to fix the dam went to the landowners.

The end result is that the dam portion of the road has been barricaded off on both sides and the road closed for 18 years.

A new problem

Another problem of late has surfaced as the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) recently conducted a site inspection of the lower and upper earthen dams at Healy’s Millpond and determined water levels on the ponds have to be drawn-down for safety reasons.

The Healy’s Mill Homeowners Association (HOA) wants VDOT and the county to close the road across the dam in “perpetuity.” HOA wants to fix the dam but the cost of bringing it up to secondary road standards is beyond their means. If the dam were downgraded to a “low hazard classification” the people living on the pond could afford the cost of the improvements. This would require the road to be closed in perpetuity, said HOA president Timothy R. Earnhardt at the Sept. 12 MCBS meeting.

The HOA wants written verification from MCBS stating that the road will remain permanently closed, said Earnhardt.

In a written letter from County Administrator Matt Walker to Earnhardt, he said “the last time road closure was discussed there was opposition to closing the road permanently. Whether such opposition still exists today will remain to be seen.”