OXFORD — Town officials are pegging hopes that protective netting will slow the tide of debris damaging the Welchville Dam.

Town Manager Michael Chammings said Wednesday that water booms — a floating netting — have been purchased for about $7,000 and their installation in the Little Androscoggin River will take place in the next few weeks. 

Debris floating down the river will be blocked from flowing downstream and into the dam’s gates, about 50 yards from where the booms will be placed.

Used by environmental agencies in high-profile oil spills, booms also are often used in trash cleanup efforts along lakes, as barriers to invasive aquatic plants and to keep waste from waterways.

The top part of the boom will be visible above the water and a net will extended nearly a foot below the surface.  

Over the years, floating materials and rocks tumbling along the riverbed have wreaked havoc on the dam’s wooden gates and, all told, Chammings estimated it will eventually cost the town $400,000 to repair them. 

Chammings said the boom may slow the gradual deterioration of the dam’s sluice gates until after construction of a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility. Completion of that project, adjacent to the dam, is expected this winter. 

“If we can collect 75 percent of the debris, we can prevent 75 percent of the problem,” Chammings said. 

According to Sun Journal records, issues at the dam have surfaced numerous times over the past three-and-a-half decades. 

As early as 1980, residents warned town officials that the dilapidated dam was in need of maintenance, calls which gained renewed vigor in 1990 after sections of the concrete structure apparently broke away and floated downstream. 

In 1994, the town bought the dam from a Connecticut-based hydroelectric power company for $25,000, and spent $15,600 making repairs and adding a fish gate. 

Estimates to repair the gates tallied as much as $1 million in 2004.