During
its first year of operation, one of the challenges Maine
Rivers has faced is how to raise people’s awareness of
river issues in the state. And one of the tools we settled on
was our very own “Top Ten” type of list – a
once-a-year accounting of the good and bad stories to emerge
about Maine’s rivers. So this fall, we solicited input
from the state’s watershed and river groups regarding the
state of Maine’s rivers. Where had they seen significant
threats to water quality and quantity, habitat, and fish passage?
Where had they seen significant improvements in those same measures?
Our goal was to accomplish a number of things: (1) To produce
a list that would be a motivator for continued progress, both
by drawing attention to problems, and by publicly rewarding progress,
and (2) To provide an opportunity for the state’s river
advocates to work together, clarifying our river restoration
goals, and speaking publicly with one voice about those goals.
On January 6th, along the banks of the
newly restored Sebasticook River, Maine Rivers unveiled its choice
of the Best and Worst River stories for 2003. “Citizens
have seen to it that many of Maine’s rivers have been protected
and restored this past year, from one end of the state to the
other,” said Bill Townsend, Maine Rivers’ president. “But
there are still powerful forces who believe our rivers are their
own private resource to pollute and degrade, and not the shared
and precious heritage of all of us in Maine.”
Townsend pointed to citizen efforts on the Sebasticook,
Sunday, Machias and Presumpscot rivers as prime examples of what’s best on Maine’s
Rivers. “On the Sebasticook, local advocates teamed with a visionary town
government and state and federal regulators to bring this river back towards
its natural state. On the Presumpscot, citizen efforts led to the first environmentally
meaningful license conditions on five previously destructive dams. On the Sunday
River, citizen sleuthing to find trouble spots has meant that hundreds of tons
of eroded soil will no longer end up smothering the river. On the Machias, another
powerful partnership of citizens, private industry, and local, state and federal
regulators will protect one of the most beautiful wilderness canoeing trips in
the east, virtually an entire river corridor.” Citizens acting quickly
to an overturned oil tanker truck stopped a potentially disastrous pollution
incident on the Sheepscot River, added Townsend; citizens lobbying the legislature
resulted in a water quality upgrade on a significant portion of the Kennebec
River.
”And then,” said Townsend, “there’s
the Penobscot Project, among the best news on Maine’s Rivers in
a generation. This groundbreaking effort, led by river advocates and
the Penobscot Nation, working with progressive leadership at PPL Corporation
as well as state government and the Interior Department, promises to
bring free flows and fish – the essence of river life – back
to significant portions of the Penobscot.”
The “Worst” part of the list, said Maine Rivers Executive Director
Naomi Schalit, was a “sorry statement of how it’s still business
as usual on many of Maine’s rivers.”
“A number of paper companies mounted an
all-out effort in 2003 to shirk their responsibility to clean up the
still-heavily polluted Androscoggin River,” said Schalit. “Residents
in a Bangor housing complex had to fight to stop the dumping of airplane
de-icer in the stream that runs behind their homes; two dams that strangle
our rivers – Fort Halifax on the Sebasticook, and the West Winterport
on Marsh Stream – are still standing even though they should have
been taken down long ago. And state water quality law has been compromised
by the DEP, which has – under pressure by the a leading utility – approved
the environmentally damaging operation of a dam above the Dead River,
in a move that even their own attorney general’s office, and the
EPA, says is in violation of state water quality law.”
“And we’ve got one more category this
year that we included when we couldn’t decide whether this story was good OR
bad,” added Schalit. “On the one hand, it’s an awful story:
Eels were once again slaughtered this fall by the turbines at the American Tissue
Dam on Cobbossee Stream in Gardiner. It was an awful sight, with chopped up eels
writhing in the water below the dam. On the other hand, it’s a story of
two really committed men – Doug Watts, head of Friends of Kennebec Salmon,
and the Maine DMR’s John Perry – interceding to stop the kill which
is, incredibly, legal in the state of Maine. Doug has been agitating for years
to get this annual killing stopped; John Perry spent days this fall watching
for signs of the kill and convinced the dam owners, once it began, to shut off
their turbines after twenty four hours of a kill. So we’re left saying
that we guess it’s progress when eels are only killed for one day on Cobbossee
Stream. Surely we should have loftier goals for Maine’s rivers.”
This is our first annual Best and Worst list. After decades – centuries,
really – of abuse on our rivers, the tide appears to be turning. Thirty
years after the Clean Water Act was passed, many of the worst abuses have been
curtailed. We’re seeing wonderful stories of citizens working together
to protect rivers and the life within them. And we celebrate those stories.
But there are still threats to Maine’s Rivers. Industries that
have treated Maine’s rivers as their own private sewers don’t want
to change their ways. In some cases, a state government that is charged with
protecting our rivers has forsaken that role, under pressure from politically
powerful polluters. And local efforts mounted against dam removal have meant
that river restoration that can benefit an entire region must play second fiddle
to narrow and, we believe, misguided local interests.
Maine’s rivers belong to all of us. And
by all of us, we don’t mean simply people. Our rivers belong to
the fish, to the birds, to stoneflies and mayflies and mussels. They
belong to the forests and lakes and streams that give them life; they
belong to the oceans whose life they feed. They are an essential part
of the vitality of this state. Here at Maine Rivers, we honor those who
honor our rivers; and question those who don’t. To honor our rivers
honors life itself; anything less diminishes it.
Maine Rivers Home Page
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Best:
The town of Newport is going to be home
to a new version of the Sebasticook River’s East Branch– which
is going to look a lot like the old Sebasticook River’s
East Branch, before it was dammed, straightened, dewatered and
otherwise trashed through decades of wrongheaded management.
Federal, state and municipal funding has  helped
Newport’s
visionary town manager and local river advocates at the Sebasticook
River Watershed Association embark on this, and a number of other
projects, that are aimed at returning the river – the Kennebec’s
largest tributary – to a state more hospitable to spawning
fish. One part of the project will largely restore the east branch
of the Sebasticook River to its original course, as it flows
out of Sebasticook Lake; once it leaves the lake, the restored
river will be unstraightened and instead bend gradually left,
as it did originally. The projects also include the removal of
the Guilford Dam; and fish passage installation on the Sebasticook
Lake Dam as well as at and below Plymouth Pond’s outlet.
This collective restoration effort represents an extraordinary
merging of effort on all levels of government and the non-profit
community, and should serve as a model for degraded rivers elsewhere
in the state. Source: Department
of Marine Resources, Department
of Agriculture
For the first time since their initial construction nearly 270 years ago, five
dams along the Presumpscot River will have  to meet environmental standards
that will bring their operation into the 20th century, if not the 21st. Critical
to this is the demand that dam owner, SAPPI – which had fought any improvements
to these dams -- install fish passage on all five dams. That news came with
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s relicensing of these dams
in October of this year.
By all accounts, the Presumpscot
River was once healthy, with thriving and robust populations of
migratory and residential fish, which provided food, recreation
and income to surrounding communities. But the river’s vitality
was decimated by water pollution and the presence of nine dams
that had no fish passage or environmental restrictions. These dams,
spread over just twenty-five miles of river, profoundly altered
the ecology of the Presumpscot, eliminating the historic fisheries
habitat and denying access to that which remained. A once fast-flowing,
continuous and productive river system was divided into nine distinct,
isolated and relatively unproductive sections.
Dam owners must now build fish passage
on all five dams and improve water flows as soon as passage is
provided at the Cumberland Mills dam, located directly beneath
the SAPPI mill in Westbrook. This dam does not produce hydropower
and the decision concerning passage at this dam lies in the hands
of the ME. Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Implementation
of the new license provisions will allow access for tens of thousands
of native sea run fish to their native spawning grounds, where
they will produce millions of baby fish that will enhance the ecosystem
of Casco Bay and the Gulf of Maine and thus begin the restoration
of the river’s fisheries.
The dam relicensings come on the
heels of other important developments along the river: In October
2002, through the efforts of the Coastal Conservation Association
(CCA) and the State of Maine, the Smelt Hill Dam -- the first dam
at the head of tide -- was removed. This restored seven miles of
free flowing habitat to the lower river. Now, Friends of the Presumpscot
River, (FOPR) Friends of Sebago Lake, and American Rivers (AR)
continue to fight for dam removal and fisheries restoration on
six dams upriver from the site of the former Smelt Hill dam. State
and federal agencies have embraced the goals championed by FOPR,
AR, FOSL and CCA, which is to bring back these species to a river
where they once were abundant. Source: Friends
of The Presumpscot River
Since
the historic removal of the Edwards Dam, and the closure of several
mills, water quality on the Kennebec River – once one of
the state’s filthiest waterways – has substantially
improved. But that improvement wasn’t recognized in the state’s
system of water quality classification, which assigns “A”, “B” or “C” status
to rivers. Each letter grade is a prescriptive designation – that
is, it describes the quality the water could meet, and thus the
amount of pollution allowed in the river or stream. So, despite
the progress in cleaning up the river, the section of the Kennebec
from Augusta to Abbagadassett Point downriver was still class “C” – the
lowest classification. That meant the river could conceivably backslide
in water quality, reversing the improvements made over the last
few years.
Both Nick Bennett of the Natural
Resources Council and volunteers with Friends of Merrymeeting Bay
have worked for a number of years towards an upgrade of the “C” classification.
FOMB spent years collecting water sampling data on dissolved oxygen
in the river segment. That work culminated in an extensive effort
in the legislature, where members of the Sportsman’s Alliance
of Maine, Saco River Salmon Club, York County Audubon, Maine People’s
Alliance, Trout Unlimited and the Atlantic Salmon Federation all
lobbied their legislators to upgrade the river segment. This outstanding
cooperative effort proved successful even in the face of strong
opposition to the upgrade from industrial and municipal dischargers
to the Kennebec River.
In 2003, volunteers, with guidance
from Jeff Stern of the Oxford County Soil and Water Conservation
District, slogged through snow and rain; braved ravenous black
flies, ticks and mosquitoes; and traversed rugged terrain to
collect data for watershed surveys and an assessment of their
river. Survey teams got lost several times in the backcountry
-- Stern says “fortunately they found their way out of
the mountains. Everyone who participated is accounted for.”
All this because the Sunday River is
in trouble. Erosion has been identified as a primary culprit in
destabilizing the Sunday River and destroying fish habitat. The
river is so unstable that camps have been moved back from the eroding
stream bank. The owners of one camp have had to do this so many
times they’ve left their camp building on rollers permanently.
And what that instability means is eroding banks, which put silt
onto the formerly rocky river bottom, smothering fish spawning
habitat. An unstable river like the Sunday is an unhealthy river.
As a result of the volunteers’ survey,
work has begun to reduce erosion from the worst sites; by late
fall 2003, 10 problematic sites had been addressed and more will
be in the next few years. The reduction in soil loading to the
river from erosion control projects completed so far is estimated
at hundreds of tons.
Stern has succeeded in bringing
together diverse, formerly adversarial groups – in that part
of Maine, the ski company and downstream agricultural interests
have been at odds for years. One observer commented that meetings
of the Sunday River Watershed Interest Group are the first time
he’s ever seen these people sit down at the same table. A
broad coalition of individuals, school groups, businesses, towns,
conservation organizations and government agencies has contributed
time, money, equipment and supplies toward the restoration effort.
It’s a broad-based partnership that's a model for community-led
river restoration efforts in Maine. Source: Jeff
Stern, Oxford County Soil and Water Conservation District, 207)
743-5789 X3.
One
of Maine’s eight remaining wild salmon rivers, the Sheepscot
begins its flow in the Montville/Palermo area, and moves through
swifts and some serious whitewater down into Whitefield and Alna,
before it begins to widen and course through Wiscasset and down
to the ocean near Boothbay. In Alna, it flows through the charming
colonial village of Head Tide. That’s where, this past November,
an environmental disaster was averted through the quick actions
of a truck driver, a homeowner, the local fire department and others.
In early November, the brakes on
a fuel truck failed as it headed down a steep hill toward the river.
Losing control, the truck crashed into a loaded school bus. The
truck rolled over, spilling oil on the bank of the river, one of
only eight rivers in the state where Atlantic salmon have been
placed on the Endangered Species List.
Prescription for disaster? Absolutely!
But none of the children on the bus were injured and the truck
driver, Daniel Scuorzo (on his first day on the job) acted quickly,
stuffing absorbent pads into the punctured fuel tank to slow the
oil spill. It was a “textbook” emergency response,
with Alna’s Assistant Chief Peter Christine and other members
of the Alna Volunteer Fire Department arriving within minutes to
deploy more oil pads and dig trenches to prevent oil from reaching
the river. Frank Gehrling, an oil and hazardous waste specialist
with the Department of Environmental Protection, arrived shortly
to supervise the transfer of the remaining fuel into an upright
tanker before the overturned truck was righted. Less than four
hours later, representatives of the Wiscasset and Whitefield Fire
Departments, Maine Department of Transportation, State Police,
Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, M.W. Sewall Oil and
a local construction company had responded, restored the spill
site and left. A quick paddle along the bank by a Sheepscot Valley
Conservation Association representative and subsequent water tests
by the DEP revealed that no oil appeared to have reached the river.
One
conservation expert calls it “a string of pearls.” It’s
among the most beautiful wilderness canoeing trips in the East,
an area renowned for  fishing, and an opportunity to protect virtually
an entire river corridor. As the result of a deal worked out by
International Paper, the Atlantic Salmon Commission, the Maine
Department of Conservation, the Machias River Watershed Council,
Maine’s Congressional delegation and the Nature Conservancy,
more than 210 miles of Machias River shoreline and portions of
six key tributaries have been permanently conserved. A mix of conservation
easement and outright purchase will conserve nearly 25,000 acres.
The partnership effort – which runs from the outlet of Third
Machias Lake east to Whitneyville - ensures sustainable forestry,
guarantees public access for traditional backcountry outdoor experiences
and protects important wildlife habitat.
The agreement permanently protects
86 percent of the Atlantic salmon habitat within the Machias river
system. The conservation easement encompasses some 18,443 acres
and covers 1,000 feet on each side of the Machias and six major
tributaries. The outright purchase encompasses roughly 6,400 additional
acres along Route 9 north to the outlet of Third Machias Lake.
These resources will be owned and managed by the Department of
Conservation. The second stage of the project, scheduled for 2004,
involves the outright purchase of the river corridor from Third
Machias Lake to Fifth Machias Lake.
In October, hydropower company PPL Corporation,
state government,  the Interior Department, the Penobscot Indian
Nation and several conservation organizations announced that
they had set aside their differences in favor of a groundbreaking
conceptual agreement that would restore the once-magnificent
Penobscot fisheries, including the largest remaining run of wild
Atlantic salmon, while also providing the opportunity to maintain
energy generation. The project calls for the purchase of three
dams on the lower Penobscot, the removal of the two closest to
the sea, and the decommissioning and bypass of a third dam that
is the gateway to significant fisheries habitat.
Under this unprecedented and innovative project:• PPL
Corporation receives the option to increase generation at six
existing dams, which would result in more than 90% of the current
energy generation being maintained; • A not-for-profit
corporation will receive the option to purchase, within 5 years
from the signing of a final agreement, the Veazie, Great Works
and Howland dams, and will subsequently remove the two lowermost
Penobscot dams: Veazie and Great Works; • The not-for-profit
corporation will pursue a state-of-the-art fish bypass in Howland
that will, if found feasible by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, maintain the impoundment; • PPL Corporation,
with the approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will
improve fish passage at four additional dams.
The Penobscot River Restoration Project may
be the most progressive and comprehensive attempt in history to
rebalance hydropower production with fisheries and other ecological
values on a major river. It will also reestablish the river’s
historic connection to the ocean, and help feed fisheries and wildlife
in the river and the Gulf of Maine. Specifically, the project will: • Allow
access to more than 500 miles of historic spawning habitat for
native sea-run fish species, improve water quality and boost wildlife; • Restore
historic fish runs while securing the potential to maintaining
hydropower production; • Establish a predictable and economically
viable way for PPL Corporation to meet its fish passage obligations; • Foster
new economic development opportunities for people and communities
along the river. Source: Penobscot
River.Org
Birch Stream
has for decades been the dumping ground for deicing effluent from
the Bangor International Airport, and emerged this year as one
of the most polluted streams in the state. In April, the stench
from the effluent in the stream got so bad residents of neighboring
Griffin Park became acutely nauseated, and couldn’t breathe
without covering their faces. Maine Rivers, the Environmental Health
Strategy Center and the Toxics Action Center worked with residents
of the neighborhood, a city-run housing complex next to the stream,
to press the city, state and National Guard to deal with this problem,
which Griffin Park residents say they believe is responsible for
a host of health problems they have experienced over the years.
The city has built a system to pipe the effluent to Bangor’s
wastewater treatment plant; latest word from the Air National Guard
was that their parallel system was almost up and running. Griffin
Park residents still continue to push the city and state to do
a full-fledged health survey of their neighborhood, and are demanding
that the state move forward quickly on a cleanup of the stream.
Source: Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the
University of Maine
For six
years, the State of Maine's Department of Environmental Protection
has considered an application for water quality certification by
the owners of the Flagstaff Dam (first Central Maine Power, then
successor owner Florida Power and Light, or FPL), which flows into
the Dead River. The owners need that certification in order to
get a new license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
to operate the dam. But the State was either unwilling or unable
to issue that certification, called a "401," because
the impoundment behind the dam - as it was proposed to be operated
- would not meet state water quality standards.
But in November 2003, state regulators
at the Department of Environmental Protection, in response to a
2003 Legislative Resolve, invented a new, less stringent standard
for the impoundment that FPL could then meet. Instead of comparing
the impoundment to a natural lake, as had been the law in Maine
for at least a decade, state regulators compared it to other, similarly
degraded impoundments. The problem with this new interpretation
of the law (which was "clearly different...than prior written
interpretations...[and] not consistent with the state's existing
water quality laws," according to an email from the Maine
Attorney General's office) is that it cannot be used in 401 certifications
without approval from EPA, which has not given its approval. Maine
Rivers, in partnership with the Natural Resources Council of Maine,
Trout Unlimited and the Appalachian Mountain Club, is appealing
the 401 certification; if the appeal is granted, it would be the
first successful appeal of a 401 certification in State history.
The
West Winterport Dam will not be removed at this time. An apparent
end has come to three years of efforts led by conservation group
Facilitators Improving Salmonid Habitat (FISH) to remove the dam.
Town officials in Frankfort and Winterport convinced the dam’s
owner, John Jones, to accede to an out-of-court settlement, rather
than continue the contentious fight over the future of the dam.
That settlement will preserve the dam indefinitely.
Under the settlement, Jones agreed
to restore the dam to its original condition. He also agreed to
cut off his relationship with FISH, with whom he’d worked
over the last three years to remove the dam. In return, the towns
consented to lay aside their moves to take the dam and Jones’ adjoining
property by eminent domain.
The West Winterport Dam straddles
the north branch of Marsh Stream, which is the boundary between
Winterport and Frankfort. It blocks upstream passage for spawning
fish such as Atlantic Salmon and river herring. Jones owned and
operated the dam for hydropower generation since the early 1980s.
Deregulation, however, made operation of the dam economically unrewarding,
and Jones started working with FISH, an affiliate of the Atlantic
Salmon Federation, to remove the dam. FISH, in turn, garnered support
for removal from all three state, and both federal, fisheries agencies.
But when FISH filed formal applications
with federal and state regulators for removal, both Winterport
and Frankfort raised vociferous objections. They claimed the dam
created an impoundment necessary for fire fighting, and served
as a flood control mechanism. Local residents also made it clear
they liked their impoundment because it provided them with recreational
opportunities, as well as waterfront property.
Nevertheless, permits for removal
were granted by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection
and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Town officials went
into high gear, and on the eve of removal, got a court order to
prevent demolition. They also initiated a move to take the dam
and Jones’ adjoining property by eminent domain. The tangled
legal proceedings created pressure that evidently Jones couldn’t
bear, and by mid December, he entered an agreement with the towns
to cease his efforts. “I got worried the court system was
not going to help me,” he told the Bangor Daily News. “I
think it would have been a crap-shoot, a big gamble…In the
end, I had to do what I had to do to save my real estate.”
FISH leader – and Maine Rivers’ president – Bill
Townsend would not speculate on the eventual outcome, other than
to say there are a lot of “loose ends”, given that
FISH still holds the State of Maine removal permit for the dam.
He said he feels “like a person who climbed Mount Everest,
but was stopped short of getting to the summit.” Nevertheless,
Townsend predicts that the dam will eventually be removed, because
the economics of operating it will never improve.
The
planned removal of the Fort Halifax dam in Winslow continues to
be stymied by a small group of locals opposed to the move. In October,
representatives of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or
FERC, came to Waterville to hold a community meeting to discuss
the Canavac (called by some critics the “Can’t-avac”)
fish pump, the unproven technology which local anti-dam removal
advocates say would move fish over the dam just fine …even
though there’s no scientific evidence to support that assertion.
The meeting was held even though not just environmentalists, but
both state and federal government resource agencies maintain that
it’s way past time to be discussing the Canavac or any other
fish passage technology, and that the only item on the table for
FERC to discuss is not if, but when, to order the removal of the
Fort Halifax dam. Source: The Natural Resources
Council of Maine
Delays in removal or installation
of fish passage at Fort Halifax could undermine the Kennebec Hydro
Developers’ Group Agreement, the historic fish restoration
agreement signed by the federal government, state officials, hydropower
industry representatives and conservation groups, which calls for
tightly scheduled provision of fish passage at dams upriver on
the Sebasticook. In some cases, that fish passage has already been
built, and awaits fish passage downstream at Fort Halifax in order
to work!
The
fate of the Androscoggin River is not at all assured. Last legislative
session, Maine’s Androscoggin paper mills -- which are responsible
for the vast majority of the pollution in the Androscoggin, one
of the dirtiest rivers in the state -- mounted an attack on the
decades-long effort to clean up Gulf Island Pond, a 14-mile impoundment
above Lewiston/Auburn. This impoundment has yet to attain even
Class C status, the lowest status for Maine’s rivers. The
mills tried to get the legislature to pass a law allowing greater
pollution of the Androscoggin, which would have been a violation
of the Clean Water Act, but only a huge outcry from the environmental
community, as well as a stern warning by the regional office of
the EPA, killed the industry effort. Now, the state is in the midst
of a legislatively-mandated process to determine whether it’s
possible to meet even the lowest water quality standards for the
Androscoggin. Recently, the state’s Department of Environmental
Protection came up with a very credible proposal where Gulf Island
Pond would in fact meet Class C standards; to do that, paper companies
would have to reduce their discharges into the water. A study that
DEP commissioned shows that the paper companies can do just that
and, in the process, greatly reduce their operating costs. Even
so, Androscoggin paper mills are fighting any attempts to clean
up their act. Source: The
Natural Resources Council of Maine, Maine Dept of Environmental
Protection
American
Eels, on their fall migration down Cobbosseecontee Stream in Gardiner,
were  once
again chopped up by the turbines at the American Tissue Dam, owned
by Ridgewood Maine Hydro Partners of New Jersey. This was a repeat
of the eel slaughters that have happened almost every year since
the dam was re-powered more than twenty years ago. This year's
eel killing was documented by intrepid Department of Marine Resources
fisheries scientist John Perry, who -- knowing that the eel migration
was about to start -- visited the dam every day watching for signs
of chopped up fish. Once he saw chopped up eels below the dam,
Perry went straight to the dam owners, who shut off the turbines
at night -- when the eels migrate -- until the end of the fall
migration season. Incredibly, the State of Maine does not consider
this and previous years' fish kills to be a violation of any State
law. This dam has caused the deaths of hundreds of eels each year
and the results are grisly. Often the female eels do not die after
they are chopped up but still live for weeks. Source: Friends
of the Kennebec Salmon, Kennebec
Journal, Kennebec Journal
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