RUMFORD — A family of beavers believed to have been washed downstream by runoff from heavy summer rains, are creating flooding headaches for landowners and town officials.

According to Town Manager Carlo Puiia, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife visited the 50- to 60-foot-long dam about 40 feet into the woods near Holyoke Avenue and the end of Spruce Street near where it changes into Swain Road.

“He advised us to put a pipe in the dam to let water out,” Puiia said on Tuesday at the town office.

The beaver dam, which snakes its way upstream, is on an unnamed brook in the Glass Face Mountain Watershed that empties into Bean Brook, which parallels Swain and Spruce streets.

Puiia said the biologist believes nature’s engineers built the dam to gain access to woody feed, which is plentiful in the area.

“The biologist said they probably got washed down the mountain in heavy rains in the early part of the summer,” Puiia said. “There are at least two beavers and, probably, a family of them.”

Although three or four affected neighbors have complained about flooded backyards, dammed water has yet to damage any town roads.

“They’ve just been a nuisance for the neighbors,” Puiia said. “After we found the beaver dam, we went in a couple of times earlier and broke up the dam,” he said.

Until the biologist suggested the pipe remedy, Puiia said that he and Public Works Superintendent Andy Russell have been punching holes through the dam on an almost daily basis to try and drain it.

The beavers, however, simply rebuild the dam using anything they can salvage.

“You wouldn’t believe what they’re putting in the dam,” he said.

Puiia said the beaver problem is the first in 10 years in that area. It might not wholly be resolved until beaver trapping season starts on Dec. 1, he added.

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