I met Nick Wildman (who was immediately identifiable by his Division of Ecological Restoration dad cap) on a gorgeous fall day at the Watertown Dam. The narrow river is lined by a walking trail and trees on either side. Despite the chill, the park bustled with dog walkers and baby carriages. The dam is rather beautiful: it creates a small bump in the river’s passage, a smooth waterfall controlling the passage of water from upstream down. But Watertown is considering removing it.

With a name like Nick Wildman, perhaps he was destined for a career restoring wild places. Even if he was, Nick took a rather nontraditional path to get there. At Duke University he took courses in wetland science, but after graduating with a Masters in environmental economics and policy, “I couldn’t get any economics or policy work, so I ended up falling back to my wetland science background.” He laughed. “I was kind of this hybrid person.”

His diverse education served him well, though: after two years spent consulting, he joined up with the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration (DER) in 2007—the only state agency in the nation which focuses specifically on restoration—back when it was still called the Riverways Program. The division’s mission statement is to “restore and protect rivers, wetlands, and watersheds in Massachusetts for the benefit of people and the environment.” As one of the division’s Ecological Restoration Specialists, Nick writes permit and grant applications, attends public meetings, and generally “make[s] things happen” on different kinds of restoration projects—especially dam removals.

“So this dam isn’t currently serving any purpose, right?” I asked him.

“Right. Well… it’s not serving any traditional dam function that you would think of,” Nick explained.

It turns out that to ask about the purpose of a dam is a far more complicated question than I expected. Watertown Dam was originally built in 1632, when dams were commonly built to power mills, provide flood control, or provide an area to capture fish. Most recently, the dam was rebuilt in the 1960s, after a flood washed it out in the ‘50s. In the 1970s, a fish ladder was installed to allow important species like shad to migrate upriver.

Watertown Dam doesn’t produce any hydropower, however. Although other dams upstream and downstream, like the Charles River Dam near the Museum of Science, provide key flood control for the area, Watertown Dam isn’t doing that either. That’s because the dam doesn’t actually block water flow; it just raises the river’s height behind the dam. In fact, dams like this can sometimes exacerbate flood problems upstream.

And despite the fish ladders, the dam still hinders key fish migration. The ladders are placed on the right side of the riverbank, the opposite side that the fish would instinctively swim to, so their path across the river to access the ladders is not as efficient as it could be. “If you come back here in the spring, you will see seagulls and osprey and other birds of all kinds picking off these fish,” Nick told me—not the ideal scenario.

So for all intents and purposes, it sounds like Watertown Dam should be a slam-dunk for removal… right? Nick doesn’t see it that way. “Typically, it’s easy to be like, “yeah, it serves no purpose,’ but I think there are a lot of people that would disagree with that.”

The Division of Ecological Restoration doesn’t just look at the ecological benefits of their projects— “the bugs and bunnies stuff,” as Nick referred to it. When evaluating a potential project, the DER also analyzes social and community value, and that’s what complicates the Watertown Dam. Many dams around the country are small and privately owned, and those are easy cases for removal: if the owner wants to take the dam out, they can. But in cases like this where the dam is public—Watertown Dam is owned by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation—there needs to be much wider buy-in. “The first thing we look to see is who would be affected by this change, and have those people been brought into the discussion yet?” Given the dam’s historic nature and the passive recreation that centers around it—all those dog walkers and baby carriages, plus swimmers, anglers, paddlers and more—the entire community needs to be supportive.

Achieving that community buy-in is where things can get difficult. According to Nick, resistance to dam removal from the community often comes in two forms: resistance to change and uncertainty. Given how old some dams are, there’s a common feeling that “they’ve been there forever.” Nick explained, “People in the community will be like, ‘you can’t take that out, I learned to swim in there, my dad learned to swim in there; I wanna take my grandkids fishing there!” The other main issue, uncertainty, is related: people aren’t sure what the river will look like or how it will function once the dam is gone. Locals worry about everything from whether removing the dam will flood their home, to what will happen to the ducks that currently swim in the pool behind the dam. (Don’t worry, though: “Clearly, ducks have no problem with flowing water,” Nick laughed. They’ll be okay.)

Having done this job for a long time, Nick has some advice for working with the community. New England in particular, he says, has a particular “attachment of place”. Telling a community about the successful results of a dam removal elsewhere in the state doesn’t often work, even if the situation is technically similar. The best strategy? Let people see nearby examples for themselves—and the more dam removals that DER completes, the more local examples people can see. That way, “our examples are more proximal, and therefore more meaningful.” In the end, though, “the easiest answer is that whatever it looks like downstream is pretty much what it’s gonna look like upstream.” Hopefully, that will assuage some uncertainty.

Massachusetts is still the home of some 3,000 dams, so dam removal may be coming to your neighborhood someday soon. Since the vast majority of those dams are considered obsolete, the DER has a lot of work left to do. In the end, though, not every “useless” dam like Watertown’s will be removed—and that’s okay. It is ultimately a community decision, and just as every dam is different, so is every community. “The costs and benefits are viewed differently by a lot of different people at every site,” Nick said, and DER can’t make anyone’s decision for them. What Nick and the team can do is provide a helping hand, and maybe a bulldozer.