EDITORIAL: The millpond was the heart of Grafton—bring it back

Grafton without its millpond would be like Port Washington without its lighthouse.

The Milwaukee River millpond in the heart of Grafton and the lighthouse at the Port Washington harbor entrance are each the most recognizable symbols of their community’s identity.

Evocative of the history of the Village of Grafton and the City of Port Washington, they both gift their citizens with opportunities to enjoy waterborne recreation and aesthetics, instill pride in their communities and attract visitors who help sustain local economies.

The millpond and lighthouse are so tightly tied to their communities that they are represented in their municipal logos.

Port has its lighthouse. But Grafton doesn’t have its millpond any more—and village officials have sown doubts it will ever get it back.

The millpond, a distinctive feature of Grafton for 185 years, drained away in May when a gate on the Bridge Street Dam failed. This lake in the river that was a source of enjoyment for fishing, canoeing, kayaking and viewing from the park along its west shore is now a mudflat.

Whether the millpond returns or is gone forever is in the hands of the Grafton Village Board. Soon after the dam failure, the board voted to delay a decision to allow time for researching options, including removing the dam.

Due diligence is fine, but the board should have started the process on the premise that the dam must be repaired and aimed the research at determining the best way to accomplish that.

An increasingly vocal group of residents is urging the village to fix the dam and restore the millpond; the elected trustees who represent those constituents should be listening.

What the board is also hearing are reasons to get rid of the dam—that repairing it would be expensive and removing it would be the environmentally right thing to do.

  Regardless of the spending needed to repair  the dam, the expense would be a shaky justification for removing the dam. Only some rough numbers have been mentioned, but surely the cost of replacing the hydraulic cylinder that operates the dam gate would not be anywhere in the neighborhood of, say, the average street repair project. The dam deserves the same consideration as other public infrastructure.

In a perfect world, all rivers would flow freely without any man-made impediments, but that is an impractical ideal. While removing dams has improved water quality and fish habitats, many remain, serving a worthwhile purpose while co-existing with river restoration efforts.

The Milwaukee River is healthier than it has been for many decades, thanks to pollution abatement and wetland restoration. Eliminating some dams has also had a positive effect. Grafton removed its Chair Factory Dam downstream from the Bridge Street Dam in 2000, which cleared a rather stagnant impoundment between the two dams.

Removal of other Milwaukee River dams and construction of a fish passage at the Mequon-Thiensville Dam have allowed fish to migrate from Lake Michigan upstream as far as the Bridge Street Dam. The presence the Grafton dam has not stood in the way of the remarkable discovery that sturgeon are starting to return to the river to spawn.

The original Bridge Street Dam was built in 1841 to harness hydraulic power for mills. With that need long obsolete, village officials proposed removing the dam in 2010. The issue was intensely controversial and was finally settled with a referendum that left no doubt that the people of Grafton valued the dam as a community resource and were willing to pay for its upkeep. An overwhelming majority—74.6 % of voters—said yes to the question of whether the dam should be preserved. There is no reason to think there is any less public support for maintaining the dam in 2026.

Environmental concerns can be addressed by planning for the eventual addition of a fish passage. A design for a fishway through the dam already exists. Considered by the village some years ago, it was put on hold because of its cost.

The idea should be revisited with new cost estimates and an exploration of environmental grants that could pay for it. It is noteworthy that restoring the Port Washington lighthouse cost $2.6 million and almost all of it was paid for by grants.

But that’s for the future. What matters now is that the millpond’s value to the community justifies the cost of repairing the dam.

So just do it.