NILES — The Dowagiac River is one step closer to flowing freely after Niles City Council unanimously agreed Monday to adopt a bond resolution to help decommissioning and demolishing costs of the Pucker Street Dam and a bid to restore its site.

The $4.055 million bond will supplement more than $1.8 million in grant commitments to date.

The $8.313 million restoration bid comes from Milbocker & Sons, Inc. of Allegan, Michigan. It was the lowest bid among three.

“This provides clear direction to the city’s staff, consultants and contractors to move forward with the project,” wrote City Administrator Ric Huff in an email after Monday’s city council meeting at the Niles Fire Department Complex.

The project is years in the making. About six years ago, the state informed the city that the Pucker Street Dam either had to be repaired, stabilized or removed. The city has since spent time weighing its options, obtaining clearance for construction from property owners near the site and finding funding, Huff said.

Prior to its decision to demolish the dam, the city had the option to sell the dam, use it to generate power or repair it, he said. Each proved difficult.

The city could not find a buyer with the financial resources to manage the dam. Generating power through the dam would never turn a profit. Repairing the dam would only be a temporary solution leading to subsequent repair costs.

“Removal at this time is the most financially efficient solution,” Huff said. “This is a lot of money, and it is very unfortunate that the eventual decommissioning of the dam wasn’t planned for generations ago.”

Pucker Street Dam was built in 1928 on the site of an 1800s wood mill to supply the city of Niles with electricity for public lighting. It stopped generating power in 1993, and the city opened up its gates a few years later. By the 1990s, it was generating less than 5 percent of the city’s total electricity needs.

At the council meeting, council member John DiCostanzo said he did not take the total cost of the project lightly, and the city has a responsibility to clean up the site.

A report by the Potawatomi Resources Conservation and Development Council found that the Dowagiac River, which the dam sits on, is the only cold water river in the general area. The council also found that, unlike some other nearby rivers, less surrounding wetlands had been lost to development and water quality was good.

The dam was cited a hindrance to the St. Joseph River Watershed by the council and the number one dam to be removed in the watershed. The dam sits about two miles from where the Dowagiac River meets the St. Joseph River.

Doing so, the council said, would improve water quality, allow for better fish migration, boost the recreational economy and limit safety risks of recreational users.

Niles City Council member Gretchen Bertschy said she would prefer to call the project the “Dowagiac River Restoration” because a “dam demolition” has a negative connotation.

While the city, state departments and the Potawatomi government approve of the dam’s removal, critics are present.

Some disapprove of the multi-million-dollar cost of the project that many city residents will not directly see. The dam and the park, owned by the city, are encompassed by Niles Charter Township.

At a May 2018 council meeting, some township residents who lived off of the river near the dam said they would no longer be able to see the river from their home.

Huff said the next phase of the project will be hazard mitigation, the deconstruction of the dam’s power house and the planning of a cofferdam to route the river around the project. These goals, he said, should be completed by the end of summer.