River is alive in ways not seen for almost 200 years
06/28/2009
Ten years after the Edwards dam was demolished at the head of tide in Augusta, the Kennebec River is visibly healthier.
That health is evident in sturgeon breaching skyward, their metallic bodies slicing out of the river and then splashing back into its depths. It’s evident in the millions of alewives that journeyed upriver this spring, their traditional spawning run now uninterrupted by a manmade barrier. It’s visible in the eagles and osprey that prowl the skies, looking for newly abundant prey in the river below.
The Kennebec River between Augusta and Waterville, once fouled by industries whose growth fueled economic development over two centuries, is now home to canoeists, kayakers and fly fishermen as well as a burgeoning population of sea-run fish.
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Beavers in for a shock
BY STEPHEN B. COLLINS
06/28/2009
Special to the Kennebec Journal
As astonishing as it was to paddlers and fishermen, no one was more surprised than the beavers when Edwards Dam was breached 10 years ago.
It was July 2, 1999 — the day after. A green Old Town Penobscot canoe carrying two Homo sapiens bobbed on swift current where a day before had been deadwater. High on the Sidney riverbank, an elaborate lodge of sticks and mud now perched incongruously a dozen feet above the new waterline — home of unsuspecting Castor canadensis.
It’s hard to say which species was more startled when the large beaver scrambled out his front door, stretched as if to land a belly-flop and swim away, but found himself tumbling tail over teakettle down the steep embankment to the water below. Just downstream, another entrance dislodged another perplexed aquatic rodent. Then a third, all in less than a minute. For 162 years their entrances had been underwater, but the dam removal changed that, literally overnight.
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Kennebec shad runs positive for Penobscot
By John Holyoke
BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News
As fishing outings go, Tuesday evening’s jaunt on the Kennebec River lacked a few of the features that most anglers typically prefer.
This was not a trip to the back-of-beyond, where getting there is half the fun, and where encountering another fisherman would have been a surprise.
Instead, this was urban fishing at its finest, and a quick glance around proved it.
Nearby — two or three well-placed casts across an expansive, paved parking lot, perhaps — was the massive building that formerly housed the Hathaway Shirt Co. A few hundred yards from that? Waterville’s bustling Main Street.
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Historic removal of dam uncorked flood of benefits
JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald
June 13, 2009
It was just two fish. But to Nate Gray, the pair of American shad that swam upstream to the Benton Falls Dam near Winslow on Wednesday – like the 1.2 million river herring that showed up this spring – was proof of nature’s resiliency.
“This is the first time a shad (has made it from the ocean) to Benton since 1837,” said Gray, a scientist with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources who has been monitoring the fish run at the dam.
It has been 10 years since Gray and about 1,000 other people stood on the eastern shore of the Kennebec River in Augusta, listening to the ringing of church bells and watching the destruction of the 162-year-old Edwards Dam.
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Tolling bells ushered in Kennebec River’s rebirth
BY Rebecca Wodder
06/28/2009
In the life of a river, a decade is but a drop of water in a roiling current. Viewed through the lens of public policy and perception, a decade can be a lifetime.
This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the removal of the Edwards Dam — an event that not only had profound benefits for the Kennebec River but that also marked a significant turning point for river restoration and the practice of dam removal in our country and around the world.
I was privileged to be there on the river bank in Augusta, watching the very moment that the Kennebec flowed free for the first time since the days of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau.
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BACK FROM THE BREACHING
BY KEITH EDWARDS
Staff Writer
06/21/2009
AUGUSTA — It was just a trickle of muddy water, poking through a dirt coffer dam on July 1, 1999.
But that trickle, the first free-flowing water there in 172 years, was the beginning of the end for the 917-foot Edwards Dam in Augusta.
The dam’s removal was precedent-setting, the first hydroelectric dam ever ordered removed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because the potential benefits of its removal outweighed the benefits of the electricity it produced.
Those benefits are now swimming in the river — large striped bass, American shad, massive prehistoric-like sturgeon, alewives by the millions, and even a few rare Atlantic salmon.
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ALEWIVES MADE HUGE SPLASH This year’s run could be largest in the U.S.
BY LARRY GRARD
Staff Writer
BENTON — The town’s Sebasticook River alewife run might be the largest in the United States this year, an official from the Department of Marine Resources says.
While most of those fish made it to upstream ponds to spawn, more than 350,000 of them were netted. The town, which gets one-third of the proceeds from the catch, has made more than $15,000 from the harvest.
Nate Gray, a Marine Resources scientist who has helped monitor the alewife run at the Benton Falls Dam, said that the Sebasticook run has been terrific. Read the rest of this entry »
Win this Brookie!!!
Win this Brookie!
Win this spectacular piece of art by James Dochtermann. Matted, framed and ready to hang, this work was done in gouache, masterfully capturing the vibrant and distinctive colors of a wild brook trout. Jim’s painting are featured in the 2008 book “Fish of Southern Maine and Seacoast New Hampshire.” Proceeds from the raffle will go to our river restoration efforts!
Drawing will be held November 18, 2009.
Ticket price: $5 per ticket or 5 for $20
To purchase tickets, please contact
Landis Hudson @ landis@mainerivers.org or 207-847-9277
Maine must let alewives swim free in St. Croix river
Clinton B. Townsend
This is the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Boundary Waters Treaty by the United States and Canada. The treaty established the International Joint Commission to address international river issues. The St. Croix River forms the boundary between New Brunswick in Canada and Maine in the United States.
Dams on the St. Croix River are under the jurisdiction of the International Joint Commission. On March 18, a petition by the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Maine Rivers and Natural Resources Council of Maine was simultaneously filed with the commission’s offices in Washington and Ottawa, requesting the commission to order opening the dams in the St. Croix River to passage of alewives, a native river herring, to their ancestral spawning grounds in the St. Croix River watershed.
Alewives are ecologically and economically important. They serve as a forage base for fish, mammals and birds, from mink to eagles, from cod to whales. They serve as a buffer against predation on Atlantic salmon smolts, which migrate out of rivers while alewives migrate in. They are important to lobster fishermen as bait when other sources of bait are scarce. Many Maine communities add thousands of dollars annually to their treasuries through the lease of alewife harvesting rights.
The goal of the petition is to undo the harm created by the decision by the state of Maine in 1995 to bar alewives at the dams because of concern over perceived detrimental impact on non-native small mouth bass, an important recreational fishery in Washington County. Since the dams were closed, the number of alewives in the St. Croix River has crashed from more than 2.5 million to less than 12,000.
The petitioners are from both sides of the international boundary. Maine Rivers and the Natural Resources Council of Maine are located in Maine. The Atlantic Salmon Federation is an international organization with headquarters in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.
It has long been a concern of advocates for alewife restoration on both sides of the border that Maine sought to impose its own will unilaterally on a resource which is significant not only to Maine and the United States, but also to New Brunswick and Canada.
In 2007, Maine Rivers published peer-reviewed scientific documentation that alewives are not detrimental to bass, and that in fact 2- and 3-year-old bass thrive on a diet of alewives.
The petition sets out the history of the obstruction of alewife passage by Maine. It spells out the ecological importance of these native fish. It outlines the jurisdiction of the International Joint Commission over the St. Croix dams, and the commission’s authority to order them to be opened for fish passage.
Lastly, the petition requests that the International Joint Commission enter an order requiring that alewives be permitted to pass through the St. Croix River dams to their historic spawning grounds.
In addition to Maine Rivers, Atlantic Salmon Federation and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, 48 nongovernmental organizations from the United States and Canada have signed on in support of the petition, 24 national, regional, and local groups from each side of the border. The full text of the petition and list of signers-on may be seen at the Maine Rivers Web site, www.mainerivers.org.
On June 17, as part of its celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Boundary Waters Treaty, the IJC held a meeting in McAdam, New Brunswick, at which there was a presentation and discussion of the St. Croix alewife issue. This was the first public step in the process which it is hoped will resolve the conflict once and for all.
It is a shame that it has taken so long for action to correct the 1995 decision by Maine to reach this stage. However, there is no reason why the International Joint Commission cannot review the facts and the law and complete a decision before the alewife run begins in 2010. I urge the American and Canadian members of the commission to apply themselves promptly and diligently to resolution of the issue, and wish them well in their deliberations.
Clinton B. Townsend is a lawyer in Skowhegan. He has served on the board of directors of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Maine Rivers and the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
Read the petition to the International Joint Commission:
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