I Heart This Bypass and Falls
Paul Pawlak Sr. Bypass Channel & Tingue Mill Falls, Seymour
February 2025
A two-for-one page! (For those of you unaware of these dustier and darker corners of this website, I visit and write about Connecticut’s waterfalls and fish ladders/bypasses. For those of you who were unaware but are still reading this sentence, congratulations. Let’s spend some time together talking fish bypasses!)
Yeah, there’s a dam here too but it’s not a very interesting dam. We’ll focus on the other stuff, even if the official name of this area in downtown Seymour is The Paul Pawlak Sr. Bypass Channel & Park at Tingue Dam. Add in the fact that this entire place is underneath Route 8 to the inelegant name and you may ask yourself, what’s here worth seeing?
Well, if you are a waterfall chaser, there’s a waterfall here. While true that most of width of the Naugatuck River is blocked by the dam here, about a third of it is not. And what’s not is Tingue Mill Falls, a natural waterfall, about 12 feet in height. It’s not the prettiest waterfall in the state, but hey, we here at CTMQ don’t judge. You’re water? You fall? And you’ve made it to a list of Connecticut waterfalls? Enjoy your time in the spotlight, Tingue Mill Falls!
This falls has been called Naugatuck Falls as well, but I prefer the name honoring the last mill that was powered by the falls here. The mill operated from the late 1800’s until 1955 when the historic flood destroyed the machinery and the mill went out of business. The building was demolished in 1959 to make room for Route 8. Tingue Mill was known for producing plush woolen covers that were commonly found on the seats of Pullman train cars throughout the nation.
The area is now a park with walkways and railings and lots of signage. You can actually see the falls from your car in the parking lot, but what fun is that. If you were to stay in your car, how would ever know who the late, former First Selectman Paul Pawlak, Sr. was?
Pawlak’s family fought to have the fish bypass named for the guy. From what I gather, the honor is well deserved. Pawlak was an environmentalist before the term existed. As a state legislator, he created the state’s first Clean Waters Act that mandated an end to industrial and residential pollution. He also was instrumental in creation of the Naugatuck Valley Health Department.
The Naugatuck River used to be horrifically polluted and supported no life. An apocryphal story from a local historian: “So much oil was dumped into the river by manufacturing companies over the years, that when workers would toss their cigarettes out of their windows, the river would catch on fire, it would actually catch on fire. Before Paul Pawlak got us involved in the Clean Water Act, nobody cared about the river.”
Before this fish bypass was built, the state DEEP was signing its praises: The state fish, the American shad, along with osprey, eagles and river otters will likely swell in numbers with the restoration of the ecosystem, according to Steve Gephard of DEEP’s Inland Fisheries Division.
That was back when it was a $4.3 million project. It wound up being around $6.3 million and the whole thing took a decade to build – finally opening in 2015. Everyone was over the moon. This park was just wonderful! And fish will positively teem upriver now!
The bypass is pretty cool. When it was built in 2015, it was the 65th fishway in the state. (Really?!) It’s relatively huge – one of the largest on the east coast – and had to be constructed in a way that kept the dam intact and didn’t mess with the integrity of Route 8’s supports. The bypass channel is about 500 feet long and 25 feet wide and much of it was hammered out of bedrock. It was created to include riffles and pools and to be as natural as possible.
Hooray for fish!
… if only fish were actually using the bypass. As it turns out, at $6.3 million, it’s about $100,000 per fish that navigates this rather awesome looking fish channel annually. Hm. Why?
In short, because there’s a dam and outdated fish ladder a few miles south of here that simply doesn’t work – and no one thought to think about that during the 15 years it took to get this one in northern Seymour up and running?!
That’s right, the Kinneytown dam, also in Seymour, has a 1990’s era fish ladder of ridiculous design. These first generation things are impossible for fish to find and navigate, so they don’t. And that means they aren’t coming to the fancy new park and waterfall and bypass channel above. Sigh.
There are groups seeking to address this. This is an amazingly well-crafted website that outlines all the issues at Kinneytown Dam. I hope that link still works, as it’s a really informative and cool site. There, you’ll learn that the dam is slated for removal by 2028 after Seymour was able to purchase it for $1 from an Italian concern than owned the dam and the decommissioned power plant buildings associated with it.
Both projects at dams in Seymour took a lot of work from a lot of dedicated people. Some are public servants, some are volunteers, and some run non-profits focused on river health and such. It would be rad if someday we can watch fish swim up the Paul Pawlak Sr. Bypass Channel at Tingue Dam by Tingue Mill Falls. It really is a cool little area that looks great and will hopefully serve a good purpose someday.
Then I can truly heart this bypass.
CTMQ’s Waterfalls & Cascades
CTMQ’s Forts, Canals, Dams, & Fishways/Lifts/Ladders
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