Antrim residents will have access to a new accessible bathhouse and facilities this summer at the town beach at Gregg Lake.

The new 450-square-foot bathhouse, which is under construction, will replace the old restrooms and maintenance building. The new building includes an ADA ramp, a new staff office, storage, restrooms and changing rooms.

“We are very excited about it,” said Antrim Recreation Department Director Celeste Lunetta. “It is very important for people to know we are adding accessible facilities at the town beach and picnic area.”

Lunetta noted that aside from the small staff office and the ADA ramp, the new bathhouse has the same footprint as the old facility. 

Three years ago, the Town of Antrim received a Land and Water Fund Conservation Fund (LWCF) Act matching grant to improve the facilities at Gregg Lake Beach, which dated to the 1960s. The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 established a federally funded program to provide matching financial assistance grants to state and local governments for the purpose acquiring or developing public outdoor recreational areas and facilities. LWCF grants are administered by New Hampshire State Parks. 

According to the Antrim Recreation Department website, all materials and equipment will be sourced from within the United States. The Gregg Lake Beach project will take place in three phases, with the LWCF funds being used for construction of the bathhouse, adding accessible trails and new play equipment to adjacent Picnic Point and making environmental upgrades the parking lot, including filtering and directing runoff away from the lake. 

While the old bathhouse had flush toilets, the new bathhouse will have waterless, dry-vault toilets, which are “very typical of state parks, national parks and rural facilities,” said Recreation Department volunteer Joan Gorga.

“People will probably wonder why the new bathhouse does not have flush toilets like the old bathhouse, and why we had to go to dry-vault toilets. The reason is there nowhere to put a septic system, and there is nowhere for the waste to go, ” Lunetta said. “The well failed, and the groundwater is only three feet down, so we have to keep the sealed tanks to prevent the possibility of contamination of the groundwater.”

Gorga said the site was ideal for dry-vault toilets due to good air circulation. 

“The beach was all built up on top of wetland,” Gorga said.  “Unfortunately, composting toilets were not an option. They have to be high up, and they are not accessible.  Incinerators were not a good option, either, so vaults were really the only option.” 

Lunetta said the Antrim Highway Department and has been instrumental in the success of the project  and credited the department with excavating, preserving and repairing the old sealed sewage tanks for use with the new bathhouses. She also praised Henniker Septic, who will be pumping out the tanks, for their assistance with the project.

“This is an example of sustainable waterside living. We have been very intentional in our choices and the design of this project,” Lunetta said. “We understand that people need nice facilities at the beach, but we need to be responsible to the environment as well as have  great recreational facilities.” 

The portion of the project funded by LCWF includes the redevelopment of the present parking area, the park entrance and the addition of a new seating area. The existing parking area, which is currently gravel, will be repaved with permeable paving stones to prevent runoff into the lake, and the parking area will be engineered to send stormwater away from the shore. 

Lunetta noted that in a survey to Antrim residents, people voted overwhelmingly to keep the faculties at the beach simple and maintain the rural character of the site. 

“People said ‘keep it simple,’” Lunetta said. “They did not want anything fancy at the beach. They want it to be the way it has always been, consistent with a rural area.”