CANTON — Bowman Construction of Newport won the contract this week to build a 100-foot-wide dam on Whitney Brook for $528,000.

The company had the lowest of five bids submitted. Others were from Technical Construction Inc. of Turner, T Buck Construction of Auburn, Wyman & Simpson Inc. of Richmond and H. E. Callahan Construction Co. of Auburn.

The contract covers construction of the dam, modifications to the exiting dam and removal of the temporary dam, and the work must be completed this fall.

Selectmen and the Dam Advisory Committee met Monday night to discuss the offers. Contractors based their bids on bedrock being no deeper than 10 feet, which on-site engineer Malcolm Ray said is close to the right depth. There are added costs built into the bids in case bedrock is deeper than that.

The dam will have two spillways, one 13 feet long and the other 28 feet long, with two-foot tall steel flashboards. The structure will be 100 feet long with the spillways and gates taking up 66 feet and two 17-foot abutments.

The construction contract is another step in the four-year-old effort to to replace the defunct 1814 dam taken over by the town after its owner failed to make repairs.

A temporary dam was built by volunteers in May 2009 to stabilize the water level Lake Anasagunticook, which lies in Canton and Hartford. Whitney Brook is an outlet of the lake.

Ray reported Monday on a meeting he had with Leon Bucher of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which is building a boat ramp at the dam site, and a soil engineer, who will be planning the site restoration.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded a $200,000 grant for cleanup of the site, which once had an old tannery. The money will be available in October.

Kleinschmidt Consultants will oversee and inspect the dam work as well as the boat launch.

A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 13, at the dam site.