The Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT), US, has announced that it will not rebuild the Newcastle-based Sherman lake dam.

Sherman is a man-made lake that drained away in October 2005 after its 70-year-old dam was breached following heavy rains. The lake will instead be returned to a tidal salt marsh.

After the breach, MDOT evaluated the input from members of the public and its own staff, along with relevant state and federal organisations. Some were in favour of the rebuilding, primarily because of the amount of recreational usage Sherman lake had.

MDOT’s decision was based primarily on the fact that the dam had not been used for transportation since the mid 1960s. It predicted the cost of fixing the Sherman dam as US$1M.