A regional committee officially ended its bid to nominate the Suncook River for the state's Rivers Management and Protection Program, after all but one town of the original seven involved withdrew from the project.

The Suncook River Nomination Committee, in a statement, cited a lack of community support as its reason for disbanding.

Originally formed with representatives from Allenstown, Barnstead, Chichester, Epsom, Gilmanton, Pembroke and Pittsfield, the committee sought to earn the Suncook River a spot in the state program that would create a local advisory council to protect the quality of the river.

When a river is nominated by its surrounding communities, the nominating committee must prove an adequate level of local support for the project before the legislature will consider granting an official designation for protection.

Vanessa Goold, principal planner at the Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission, said the Suncook committee members did not believe they had enough support after six of the towns dropped out, leaving only Allenstown on board.

“As we went through the nomination process, there were a lot of public meetings to let people know what the nomination meant and didn't mean,” she said. “During that process, a number of people came to various meetings and had a lot of concerns and questions about the program.”

Allenstown Police Chief Shaun Mulholland, who served on the nominating committee, attributed the lack of widespread support to misinformation about the powers of the advisory council.

“There's a misconception that this would give (the Department of Environmental Services) broad authority to regulate people's lands along the river,” he said. “It was sufficient enough to derail the process, and now unfortunately there's no entity that will allow the local communities to work together to address river issues.”

Mulholland said the council would only be able to act in an advisory capacity, without any sort of statutory authority. Allenstown continued to back the nomination project in hopes that the towns along the river would be able to join forces on issues like flooding.

“It's really up to each individual town, and obviously Allenstown supported it,” said Allenstown town administrator Paul Apple. ”But some of our neighboring communities did not. From an Allenstown perspective, it is a bit of a disappointment.”

Goold, from the planning commission, said any town or group of municipalities can seek nomination for any river or just a segment of it, meaning Allenstown could have continued the process on its own.

“They could have gone forward just as a single town with a single segment of river, but they really wanted to be part of a regional community effort,” she said.

Mulholland said that the program's benefit for Allenstown would have been the creation of a body fostering regional cooperation on river issues.

“We don't have that right now,” he said. “The primary focus that Allenstown was looking at was to work with our neighboring communities.”

klannan@newstote.com