Throughout most of her 40 years living on Old Killingly Pond, Susan Rosenstone Larrow had easy access to its placid waters, which she and her neighbors also touted as some of the clearest in the state. From her upstairs studio, the former art teacher spent afternoons painting scenes of life on t he pond: her husband, Gene, fishing with his two grandchildren from a dock in summer; amber leaves scattered along the shore in autumn; a bald eagle perched on a branch in search of fish. Then one morning last October, Rosenstone Larrow and her neighbors awoke to find water gushing out of the old stone dam that had held the pond in place for over a century. Spurred by concerns over the dam’s safety, state officials had authorized its owner, Wright Investors’ Service Holdings, to conduct an emergency drawdown of the pond. In a matter of months, the pond shrank to a quarter of its former size, leaving behind acres of rocks and mud. Docks where generations of children had once learned to swim were left suspended over bare ground. “I like painting rocks, I never thought I’d have this many to chose from,” Rosenstone Larrow said. The decision to drain Old Killingly Pond — a man-made body of water on the border between Connecticut and Rhode Island — kicked off a campaign by local residents and town officials to restore the water levels in the pond and have the state take ownership of the dam, providing for its long-term maintenance. On Tuesday, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced it had taken the first step in an enforcement action against WISH, the dam’s owner, by sending the company a draft consent order to fix the dam and restore water in the pond to its pre-drawdown levels. Officials said the decision was made based on the agency’s determination that the continued drawdown of the pond would have an adverse impact on habitats for protected plants and animals, including several species of damselflies. The agency didn’t comment on whether it was considering taking over the dam. Water from Old Killingly Pond trickles through Killingly Pond Dam’s low-level outlet gate on Dam Road on Tuesday, August 18, 2026. Credit: Sarah Gordon / CT Mirror Graham Stevens, the head of DEEP’s Bureau of Water Protection and Land Reuse, said Tuesday’s letter essentially invites WISH to enter into an agreement to make the necessary repairs to the dam. Should the company decline, he said, the agency has other enforcement tools at its disposal to get the dam repaired. “Regardless of the negotiation outcome, this will be a long process, and this is just the first step,” Stevens said. Stevens said WISH didn’t immediately reply to the letter Tuesday. He added that work to restore the dam and raise water levels would likely take several years and could cost “multiple millions of dollars.” Old Killingly Pond is the first in a series of reservoirs created in the first half of the 19th Century by the construction of dams used to power local mills. Over time, the mills declined and they, along with the dams, passed through a series of owners before ending up in the hands of WISH, a holding company based in Mount Kisco, N.Y. In an email on Tuesday, WISH’s acting chief financial officer, Harold Kahn, said the company has no business operations and no revenue. He declined to comment further on issues involving the dam. Today, the pond is home to around a dozen year-round residents, along with several seasonal cottages that are occupied in the summer months. Before the drawdown, the pond was about 138 acres in size, split between Connecticut and Rhode Island. Most of the land surrounding the pond is held in public trust by the two states, including portions of Killingly Pond State Park. The dam owned by WISH, along with most of the residences, are located within Connecticut. In addition to the loss of waterfront property, residents and town officials said the drawdown has caused several wells feeding seasonal cottages to dry up and resulted in excess sediment flowing downstream to other reservoirs. Fire officials in East Killingly, a section of town that lacks access to hydrants, warned that the drawdown left them without a place to fill up tanker trucks needed to respond to fires. Lower water levels also exposed a suspected Native American burial ground that had been flooded by the construction of the dam in the early 19th Century. Residents along the pond say it’s unclear what work, if any, WISH performed to maintain the dam at Old Killingly Pond. Several said they were unaware the company owned the dam until it began draining the pond last year. Seasonal resident Jamie Chaparro walks through exposed lake bottom at Old Killingly Pond on Tuesday, August 18, 2026. Before the dam drawdown, the area was covered in water. Credit: Sarah Gordon / CT Mirror Stevens, who oversees dam safety at DEEP, said the agency was notified by the owners last year that an inspection had found the dam was leaking water, raising concerns about its structural integrity. In response, he said, DEEP authorized an emergency drawdown. “There was a fear that this dam might fail, and if it were to fail, it put at risk life and property — not to mention the environmental consequences of such a catastrophic event,” Stevens said. Once the drawdown was complete and the risk of failure had abated for the time being, Stevens said, the owner was directed to come up with a long-term plan for safely operating the dam. In response, WISH proposed a plan to keep the pond drained in order to reduce pressure on the dam, Stevens said. That proposal drew stong objections from local residents and elected officials in Killingly. Stevens said Tuesday’s letter effectively served as a rejection of WISH’s plan to keep the pond drained. State Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Windham, announced the news of DEEP’s decision following a meeting Tuesday with the agency and town officials. Asked whether the idea of a state takeover was broached at the meeting, Flexer said the effort the get WISH to pay for repairs to the dam represented the “beginning of the process.” “I think any takeover or ownership [change] is months away,” she said. “Today’s action shows that DEEP has been methodically trying to find a solution to this issue,” Flexer added. “I’m grateful for them for taking action and holding these dam owners accountable.” Residents, meanwhile, reacted to the news with a mixture of relief and trepidation over whether WISH would be responsive to the state’s efforts to broker a solution. An acrylic painting of Old Killingly Pond by Susan Rosenstone Larrow Credit: COURTESY/ SUSAN ROSENSTONE LARROW “Now we have to hope” that WISH agrees to fix the dam, Rosenstone Larrow said. “I’m not too convinced that WISH will do it.” Justen Fisher, who lives with his wife and two daughters in a house the family had built on the pond, praised DEEP for being responsive to the pleas from the small community of residents on the pond. “To feel the support and actually to feel being heard… it’s super relieving,” Fisher said. “Now we’ve got the state on our side, let’s take it to the finish line.” ...read more read less