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For most of the spring, many anglers have kept a close eye on the number of Atlantic salmon that had returned to the Veazie Dam on the Penobscot River.

According to Oliver Cox, a fishery biologist for the Bureau of Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the steady return of fish has finally slowed.

A couple weeks ago I caught up with Cox and his colleague, Norm Dube, and they said predicting the end of the annual salmon run was a difficult task, as several factors had to be considered.

Among those: Fish have to be waiting at the river’s mouth, ready to head upstream. The river’s flow must also be at a level that the fish find hospitable, and its temperature must fall within a range the fish can accept.

In his regular weekly e-mail update, Cox said 1,904 salmon had been trapped at the Veazie Dam as of Wednesday. In the recent past, total annual returns have averaged about 1,000 fish.

"The number of salmon per day has declined from 44 last Wednesday [July 2] to zero today [Wednesday)," Cox wrote in his report. "At the same time water temperatures have increased from 21 to 25º C (70 to 77º F).

"The last time we had zero salmon in the trap was May 19, six days after opening the trap," he wrote.

If the recent string of hot, muggy days continues, the Penobscot will continue to warm, and will likely remain unattractive to fish.

That’s to be expected, and typically the salmon run peters out in mid-July and August.

A couple of rainstorms or cooling weather pattern could combine to push the river’s total over the 2,000-fish mark sometime later this year.

That would be far short of the 4,137 fish that were trapped at Veazie in 1986 — the highest total recorded since the trap was activated in 1978 — but would still mark a substantial increase over the most recent 10-year average.

07/18/2008

Kennebec Journal

On Wednesday morning, as huge yellow excavators pounded and clawed away at the face of the Fort Halifax dam, a lone man stood on the Sebasticook Bridge just downstream, watching the demolition.   We didn't get his name, but his identity is not as important as the sentiment he expressed.  "I just don't get it," he said, shaking his head. "I just don't get it.  "Is it about the fish? It's about the fish, isn't it?" he said, to a woman watching next to him.  Yes. It's about the fish.  And the law and economics.

On Thursday, those excavators breached the dam. And as water spilled through the broken concrete and rebar, a new chapter in the life of the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers began.

* * *

The fuel of Maine's industrial expansion in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was provided largely by its rivers, and the dams built on the Kennebec and Sebasticook are part of the economic heritage of this state. But the Kennebec and Sebasticook dams also strangled the rivers' free flow, and native fish were denied access to their historic upriver spawning grounds for more than a century and a half, leading to immense declines in their once-abundant numbers. By the mid-1990s, it became clear to federal and state regulators, as well as local conservation groups, that the environmental damage caused by at least some of those dams was not justified by the power they contributed to Maine's economy. So in an historic decision, the federal government -- newly required by law to balance environmental considerations with power generation needs when considering dam licensing -- ordered the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Augusta.

That decision, 10 years in the making, was accompanied by an additional legal agreement entered into by federal and state governments, conservation groups and the hydropower dam owners further upstream on the Kennebec and its tributaries. The dam owners would help pay for the Edwards Dam removal and for fish restoration efforts on the river system in exchange for delays in installing expensive fish passage at their dams to accommodate the fish heading upstream after the Edwards Dam removal.

When the Fort Halifax dam's owner took a hard look at the final numbers on the cost to install fish passage versus the net income generated by the dam, it found it simply didn't make business sense to build an expensive fish lift on the small dam. So seven years ago, the company announced it would surrender the dam's license and take it down.

Which brings us to today.

Whoa, there! What about the seven-year fight by the local property-owners' group, Save Our Sebasticook, to stop the dam's

breaching?  In the end, that is not what this new day is about. Save Our Sebasticook mounted a rear-guard effort to keep the Fort Halifax dam. Its members filed lawsuits and administrative actions to stop the breaching. Their efforts failed.   In the end, Save Our Sebasticook could not stop the fish, the law or the powerful forces of economics.

So as the Sebasticook River flows freely now from Benton Falls to Kennebec and thence to the sea, its new story is about the fish, yes, and the chance the river's shad, blueback herring, salmon, sturgeon, striped bass, alewife, smelt, tomcod, eel and lamprey now have to reproduce in an additional 5.5 miles of spawning habitat.   It's about the law, which over many generations in America has matured to encompass an understanding that restoration of natural systems is part of our common legal obligation.

And it's about simple economics, which dictate that if it's too expensive to fix a dam that degrades the environment, then the dam is history.

* * *

If the rapid recovery of the Kennebec riverbanks after the Edwards Dam removal is any guide, it won't be a long time before the Sebasticook River from Benton to Fort Halifax pretties up. Its muddy slopes are already showing some green after weeks of drawdown. Nor will it take long for native fish to make their way upstream next spring, bringing with them a host of hungry followers like eagles, osprey and great blue heron. It may be a long time before the scars of the long conflict over the

dam's removal will heal. Change is hard, and loss is even harder. Yet anyone who has ventured up the Kennebec since the Edwards Dam removal knows this river as shallower, yes, but infinitely more full of life. What was once perceived of as loss has become gain, with golden sturgeon shooting skyward on a hot summer's day and countless birds wheeling overhead. No longer a muddy, slow-moving impoundment, the river sparkles and dances as it makes its way from Waterville to Augusta and thence to the Atlantic.

The Sebasticook will heal from its long damming at Fort Halifax and emerge a healthier, more vital river. Perhaps, too, those who live along its banks will eventually find themselves partner to this new river, looking out from their kitchen and living room windows one day onto a new, different -- but rich and rewarding landscape.