I never really gave it much thought, but there’s a big dam in Merrimack, next to our central fire station, on the Souhegan River.

But it apparently needed a lot of work, and people realized that it serves no benefit, and then people like NOAA (who I frequently forget is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) pointed out that, from an ecological standpoint, it was doing more harm than good, by keeping fish from swimming upstream and the like.

So instead of spending the money to repair it, it was decided to take it out.

Of course, this would be a really boring blog post if that was all. But they set up a webcam trained on the dam. Unlike normal 640×480 ‘video’ feeds, this one is a decent camera (Canon PowerShot, from the EXIF data), snapping a photo every 15 minutes. (Jump from, say, August 1st to today to see the difference.) And in between, you can see the work being done. (And then start the slideshow!)