LOWELL — A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal seeking to stop plans for a new style and look to the Pawtucket Dam.
The victory for Boott Hydropower, which owns the dam, came Thursday when an appeal from the federal Department of the Interior was thrown out. It was the latest of a series of challenges by those opposed to the plan for replacing the dam’s historic wooden flashboard system.
Boott Hydropower proposes a pneumatic system that would control how much water flows over the dam.
Opponents have argued the new ‘bladder’ system would require drilling into the dam and could cause upstream water levels to rise. They also object to replacing the historic system, in which the wooden pieces above the dam bend to allow water to flow over the structure.
Boott has denied those concerns.
The federal appeals court judges found that an approval for the new dam system by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was “not inconsistent” with the Lowell Act, which prohibits federal approval for projects that negatively affect resources in the Lowell National Historical Park.
“At the end of the day, (the Department of the) Interior simply disagreed with FERC’s evaluation of the evidence and with FERC’s ultimate conclusions,” the judges wrote in their decision, “and that is not enough to overturn the agency’s orders.
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