If Alna’s Head Tide Dam Committee does as selectmen asked on Dec. 16, the panel will lose some members and, selectmen hoped, gain more balance in its viewpoints. It’s too big and is looking at options the town doesn’t want, selectmen said.

On Dec. 30, selectmen plan to consider giving the committee a new mission statement and a green light to keep working.

Members will need to abandon any ideas to destroy or substantially change the dam, selectmen said. Meeting with Committee Chairman David Reingardt and Atantic Salmon Federation Vice President of U.S. Programs Andrew Goode, board members once again said not to propose anything against the Jewett family’s wishes when it gave the town the concrete dam a half-century ago.

“I knew Allen Jewett and he was a good citizen of the town. I’m not going to be a party to undermining the trust he put in this town,” Third Selectman Doug Baston said.

He and First Selectman David Abbott told Reingardt and Goode, they would not ask voters for anything that would take a court order to get around the deed restriction. Second Selectman Melissa Spinney said she would only consider it if the dam was falling apart.

Abbott said he wasn’t sure why the town agreed to take the dam, but it did, so the selectmen are its stewards. He didn’t see how, in good conscience, he could even consider asking voters to remove or partly remove the dam, he said.

The board’s message is loud and clear, Goode said. He agreed that a smaller, more balanced committee would be better. It’s time to step back and see if fish passage can still be helped, within the constraints the board laid out, he said.

Reingardt, a former selectman, told the board, “I know you’re in the driver’s seat.” The only other way to get a proposal to a town vote would be by petition, he said.  “I don’t want to see it go that way. I think there’s something we can do at that site that can make everyone happy.”

Some members want the dam gone and the river wide open, Reingardt said. The committee should look at a lot more options, such as lowering the dam instead of creating a gap, Reingardt said.

If the dam isn’t damming the river, it wouldn’t be a dam, Baston responded. 

Early in the night’s talks, Reingardt said selectmen might be constraining the committee to a point where there would be no project to help the fish and shore up the aging dam.

“And then I think you’re done. Let it fall into the river.”

But selectmen said they would be OK with the panel looking at a fish ladder; that would alter the site, but not the dam, Baston said.

The committee has the problem of having people on it who wanted to be, selectmen said. Membership was self-selected, which attracts people with agendas, they said.

The committee guided the concepts Inter-Fluve came up with, Spinney said. She predicted the committee will propose something the board can support, however.

“I think we’ll find something,” she said and raised a thumb.

“I  hope so,” Baston said.