Changes to an abutment might get 50 percent more fish past Alna’s Head Tide Dam, an Atlantic Salmon Federation official told selectmen Feb. 24. The prospect encouraged board members, who then pared their large advisory committee down to a five-member panel with a single charge, to explore that option.

Third Selectman Doug Baston said the potential extent of the improved fish passage surprised him. The board thanked the Head Tide Dam Committee for its 2015 work, which had sparked concern over options to take out part of the dam’s spillway but also gathered a lot of information for the board and the federation.

“It wasn’t always smooth, but in the end, we fleshed out some things that needed to be fleshed out,” Baston said.

Selectmen had previously come close to downsizing the committee but held off in deference to the commitment its members had shown.

In shrinking it Feb. 24, selectmen reiterated that a smaller panel may work better. “You get too many people, you get too many opinions,” First Selectman David Abbott said.

The members moving on to the new panel are Greg Shute, Ralph Hilton, Chris Kenoyer, Gerry Flanagan and Second Selectman Melissa Spinney. Selectmen wrote down names of who they wanted on it. Shute and Hilton were 3-0 picks; Hilton suggested his slot go to alewife harvester David Sutter, who Hilton said knows more about the river.

“I’m too much of a lightning rod,” Hilton said. But he agreed to stay on after participants noted the data-gathering stage is largely over and that Sutter could still be tapped as an adviser.

A letter the board got hours earlier from the federation’s vice president of U.S. programs, Andy Goode, supports the committee’s shrinking and suggests that the new panel could move from night to daytime meetings and do a lot of its work electronically.

“A lot of good work has been accomplished over the past year,” Goode writes. “I think we are all much better informed on the fisheries and other uses of the river as well as the challenges posed by the legal reality of the deed covenant and the diverse views in Alna surrounding the dam.

“The Committee served to bring focus to these ... I am hopeful this new focus can make meaningful improvements to fish passage which combined with other work we hope to accomplish upstream adds up to tangible increases to (fish runs). I believe the Selectmen are committed to attempting to find a solution that will address, to the degree possible, all these competing issues,” the letter continues.

Goode is currently seeking to remove a dam in neighboring Whitefield.

In the letter to Alna selectmen and later in person at the board’s meeting, Goode touched on the idea to replace one of the dam’s two abutments that bookend the dam’s spillway. New concrete would replace the century-old concrete of the abutment nearest the parking lot and Head Tide Road; the platform atop it would be rebuilt and the railings replaced.

That abutment may be the most deteriorated part of the dam, Goode said; and since it’s on the near or west side, replacing it with a narrower one might have little impact on the dam’s appearance, he added.

Selectmen were waiting to hear back from town attorney David Soule about the covenant the town agreed to a half-century ago when it accepted the dam’s deed from the Jewett family. The covenant bars the dam’s destruction but selectmen are uncertain about a reference to the dam as it is presently situated. They didn’t know if that just meant the dam couldn’t be moved, or if the dam cannot be changed in any way.

The answer will determine if the abutment project is possible, selectmen said. However, one possible part of the project, to remove some nearby bedrock, would touch the earth, not the dam, so it might not fall under the covenant, Baston said.