Town taxpayers, USDA funds lauded for Effingham bridge replacement

The Board of Selectmen held an outdoor meeting Thursday at the Snow Road Bridge during which they recognized a group of culvert-clogging beavers, town taxpayers, and USDA Rural Development for the bridge’s replacement.

About a decade ago, the 50-foot long, two-lane span over the ironically-named South River — the South River actually flows north from Province Lake in Effingham to the Ossipee River, which itself joins the Saco River — came to the attention of the board because of flooding to its approaches after heavy rainstorms, said Chairman Lenny Espie.

Built in the 1970s, the bridge carries Snow Road, which is where the town’s transfer station is located, said Selectman Chuck Fuller.

Because of the beavers building dams, the bridge’s four culverts soon filled with the detritus of the beavers’ work, which, Fuller noted, just happened to coincide with the realization that the culverts had outlived their useful lives and that the town needed to do something.

In 2015, when he was a selectman, Mike Cahalane said he and the town worked through the options for the Snow Road Bridge and eventually decided a new bridge should be built. Four years later, when USDA Rural Aid funding became available for the bridge project, the town applied for it, and some 18 months later was awarded $250,000.

Separately, town voters appropriated $300,000, but the final cost of the project turned out to be $483,000, said Cahalane, which meant that “just shy of $67,000” of the town’s appropriation was returned.

At the time when he applied for the USDA Rural Aid grant, Cahalane remembered thinking “It was very important to get that money,” with Fuller explaining that Effingham is not a wealthy community.

There are only 950 residences and just one commercial entity that are taxable in Effingham, said Fuller, which makes doing large projects challenging.

Cahalane thanked Sarah Waring, the USDA Rural Development State Director for Vermont/New Hampshire, and U.S. Congressman Chris Pappas for coming to the Snow Road Bridge on Thursday as part of the pair’s three-stop tour of Rural Development-funded projects in Carroll County.

The projects highlight innovative, energy-smart initiatives and infrastructure” and include a solar array in Conway which received a $15.2 million loan and which Waring said both produces electricity for the regional power grid while reducing the energy burden of Stonyfield Farm’s facility in Londonderry.

A $493,000 Community Facilities Disaster Relief Grant was used by the town of Tamworth to increase the capacity of its transfer station, which was Pappas and Waring’s final stop Thursday, and to make it more efficient, something that the USDA Rural Development said “will affect climate change and groundwater pollution issues in the future as it address the New Hampshire lack of landfill property capacity.”

Waring said a goal of Thursday’s tour with Pappas was “to show that federal programs can fund such projects,” from the small to the large, while the tour’s bigger theme was of sustainability “while creating jobs and lowering costs.”

The bottom line, said Waring is that “We have more money right now than we’ve ever had” as an agency, for energy efficiency and alternative energy projects undertaken by business, farmers and rural communities.

She said it was “an honor to be on the road” with Pappas because of his past and continued support of such funding.

Pappas said USDA Rural Development programs represent “a lifeline” to many communities in the Granite State, adding that “this kind of infrastructure” — the Snow Road Bridge — “is really essential.”

He was hopeful that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would not cut USDA Rural Development funding, adding that he would continue to advocate for it.