Romney may face dam critics

The Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee is expected to issue a report today accusing the Romney administration of neglecting the state's dams by not inspecting and maintaining them, several senators said.

One of the dams cited in the report is on the Spicket River in Methuen, which was being inundated late last night by the recent rainfall and flooding, WHDH-TV reported.

In October, after overflow from the Whittenton Pond Dam threatened to flood Taunton, state officials acknowledged that oversight of dams had been lax, and they ordered emergency inspections of 186 dams across the state. That inspection found no structural problems as serious as those in Taunton, where the 173-year-old dam threatened to buckle and flood part of the city.

Yesterday, administration officials defended their dam safety program.

''This administration has done more for dam safety in the past three years than had been done in the past three decades," said Joseph O'Keefe, chief of staff of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, which oversees the Division of Conservation and Recreation. The Division of Conservation and Recreation is in charge of 332 dams.

''The infusion of capital spending, the promulgation of new regulations to insure responsible private ownership and maintenance and the increase in the budget for the Office of Dam Safety insures that Massachusetts will be a leader in the country in insuring that private dam owners are held to a high standard," O'Keefe said.

Since most dams are owned privately, taxpayers should not have to bear the cost of repairs, O'Keefe added.

The administration determined that repairing every Division of Conservation and Recreation dam would cost $32 million, while fixing the worst of the division's dams would cost $10.3 million over three years.

Also last year, the state put in place regulations that will shift the burden of dam inspections to private owners, who will be responsible for having their dams inspected. The state will oversee the new inspection program, at a cost of $3.8 million over three years, officials said.

''The problem has . . . not enough money being appropriated by either the executive branch or the legislature," said Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Republican of Weymouth.