A tough situation in Manawa involving the future of the millpond after the state budget excluded a project to replace the dam after it failed last year due to heavy rainfall (story HERE).

Making the situation even tougher is the fact that there are some residents that actually don’t want to dam replaced and are enjoying the river as it is.

To their credit, the pro dam residents are prepared to start raising money to do the project themselves. In my day, you’d be surprised how many are “all in” in a project until they realize that they have to go all in with some of their own money.

The message here is more like a question. Should these pro millpond residents bother putting up their own money, if there are another group of residents trying to keep the dam down? The answer is no.

This is not a cheap project. The dam needs to be completely rebuilt and the price tag is in the millions according to some project slides floating around.

This cannot be a divided community effort. And I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be glaring at the community residents who are fighting me, or even standing neutral, come the day they show up and try to enjoy the project I had to buy for them.

What can be done is to perhaps look at the parties that were making money when the dam was still up. The state funds may not be coming but was the revenue enough to get them on board with any rebuilding efforts? Probably not.

Because there is no way I’d put up money for a major project that some of my neighbors will be rooting against.