Photos by Darin Oswald / The Idaho Statesman
Shrouded in New England mist, a party of canoers and kayakers cuts through the calm waters of the Kennebec River near Sydney, Maine, while exploring a 17-mile stretch of the river from Waterville to Augusta. The Kennebec River below Waterville was controlled by a dam at Augusta until it was breached in 1999. In the six years since the dam was removed, the river’s ecosystem has shown a dramatic improvement, with cleaner water, more species diversity and a return of ocean-going fish such as Atlantic salmon.
A fly fisherman casts for American shad and striped bass, two ocean-going fish that returned to the free-flowing stretch of the Kennebec River near Waterville, Maine.
Canoers explore Bond Brooke, a tributary to the Kennebec River that connects downriver from the old Edwards Dam site in Augusta. It has long been known as an Atlantic salmon spawning stream since it was located below the dam and the fish had access between the ocean and the stream. Now, several other tributaries upstream have been opened with the removal of Edwards.
Angela Nadeau of Portsmith, N.H., lets her fingers glide along the surface of the Kennebec River while riding with John Burrows, rear, and Christy Cole on a 17-mile canoe trip from Waterville to Augusta, Maine. They were a part of a crew examining the effects of the removal of the Edwards Dam six years earlier by floating the area once covered by the dam’s reservoir.
Steve Brooke was director of the Kennebec Coalition six years ago when the organization pushed to breach Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine.
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AUGUSTA, Maine — George Viles opposed the 1999 removal of the Edwards Dam
that would free Maine's Kennebec River but leave mudflats and uncertainty for
his home and life on the river.
Six years later, the river has gone through a dramatic transformation, and so
has Viles.
"Now I still have a broad river in front of my house, the silt is gone, and
because of the fast flows, it's cleaner and full of life," Viles said.
"I was uncertain about change, but the change has turned out better."
Everything from bottom-feeding bacteria and aquatic insects to salmon and the
6-foot-long sturgeon that rise out of the water and drop with a loud splash has
made a dramatic comeback since the 160-year-old dam came down amid great
national fanfare. It was the first dam ordered to be removed against the will of
its owner, beginning a national river restoration debate that has reached into
Idaho and the Snake River.
Since 1999, 178 dams have been removed from American rivers, including many no
longer used for producing power, operating mills, controlling floods or
providing recreation. None, though, have matched the scale of breaching the four
lower Snake River dams in Washington as proposed by salmon anglers, Indian
tribes and environmentalists.
Sport fishermen led a fight that lasted for more than 10 years before the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered the Edwards Dam removed to restore
fish. The long ordeal came despite the relatively small amount of power produced
— 3.5 megawatts. The commission ordered the dam removed because adequate fish
passage facilities were too expensive.
Removing the Swan Falls-sized dam presented no major engineering hurdles and
eventually gained support from Maine political leaders.
"It's always easy to attack one renewable energy project because every one
is going to have some issues," said Mark Isaacson, the former owner of the
Edwards Dam. "We can live without that one, it's certainly true, but it's
much less clear that we can live without all of them."
The four lower Snake dams produce nearly 1,200 megawatts of electricity —
the amount needed to power the city of Seattle — which represents 5 percent of
the electricity produced by federal dams in the Pacific Northwest. Removing the
dams would require the building of new power plants or increased conservation,
both of which would increase electric rates. Then there is the barge shipping,
mostly of grain, from Lewiston to Portland that would be lost and the draining
of large slackwater reservoirs that allow Lewiston residents and others the
opportunity to water ski and catch warmwater fish like crappie.
Most fisheries biologists say breaching the four dams — half of the dams
Idaho's endangered salmon must pass before reaching the Pacific — is the best
and perhaps only way to recover abundant or even viable salmon populations.
Salmon represent the wild character of the Pacific Northwest, provide the basis
for a large fishing economy from Alaska to Challis, and both subsistence and
spiritual sustenance for the region's Indian tribes.
"It's different out your way — you have to deal with tradeoffs,"
said Steve Brooke, who led the Kennebec Coalition that succeeded in getting the
Edwards Dam removed. "You need to seek balance."
Breaching the Kennebec changed the look of the river
Brooke was confident the Kennebec would respond once the dam was removed. But
he and other removal proponents have been surprised with the speed and breadth
of improvement. Brooke, who had worked toward its breaching, canoed the
free-flowing Kennebec the day after the dam was removed, 160 years after
Nathaniel Hawthorne had walked its banks during the dam's construction.
Paddling against a head wind through a thunderstorm, Brooke saw waist-deep mud
and banks littered with garbage, including a sofa, car tires and a refrigerator.
Assorted mussels and other aquatic creatures were left dry.
The portions of the river that had been in the heart of the reservoir behind the
Edwards Dam appeared much as the Lewiston-Clarkston area did when the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers lowered the reservoir behind Lower Granite Dam in 1992 as an
experiment. Boat docks and landings didn't reach the water.
Viles, an outdoor enthusiast, lives upstream of Augusta, Maine's capital,
along the river stretch where the reservoir had been. The river was wide and
deep in front of his house, and he even saw sailboats on the water at times. He
had a canoe and regularly fished for smallmouth bass.
"I was offended when they moved to take out the dam in my back yard,"
Viles said. "I knew what I had, and even though I listened to the
scientists, there was no sure thing."
He joined the crowd of environmentalists, state and federal officials,
utility executives and industrialists who watched a backhoe cut through the dam
July 1, 1999, and drain the reservoir. Then he hurried home to see the results.
When he arrived, eagles and gulls and hundreds of birds were feasting on mussels
on the exposed mud flats. Beaver houses were left exposed. Foxes patrolled the
banks of the river unafraid to take part in the feast.
The distinctive bog-like sour smell the river always had was even stronger.
While not all pleasing, the sudden changes fascinated Viles.
"What happened immediately was a burst of life," Viles said.
Ecologically, the river went through an instant transformation
The larger flow increased the oxygen levels of the water, which led to a 10
to 30 time explosion in the number of insects, snails and other invertebrates
that state biologists found in the river. The stretch of river was quickly
changed from a Class C classification for water quality, meaning heavily
polluted, to a Class B, the second highest classification.
The biological diversity throughout the food chain multiplied, said Nate Gray, a
biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
"It happened like a bomb went off," Gray said.
Within the first year, sea run fish like Atlantic salmon, sturgeon, sea lamprey,
eels, alewives, blueback herring, striped bass and American shad were seen in
the Waterville area, the location of the next dams preventing passage.
The alewife return has been especially dramatic with between 1 million to 2
million of the small bait fish critical to the ecosystem returned to the
Sebasticook River, a tributary to the Kennebec.
"The river was black with fish this May," said Gail Wippelhauser, a
marine biologist for the state. "It was like salmon in rivers in
Alaska."
Salmon numbers also have increased but how much is not clear, said Jeff Reardon,
of Trout Unlimited, one of the groups that spearheaded removal. Biologists are
finding redds or nests in upriver tributaries as far as 19 miles above the old
dam.
"They've done more than we expected they would," Reardon said.
Historically, 50,000 to 100,000 Atlantic salmon returned to spawn in the
Kennebec, but the building of the Edwards Dam and others upriver cut off
hundreds of miles of habitat. Before the dam was taken out, the river was not
considered as a part of salmon restoration plans.
Even with the dam removed, much of the prime spawning habitat lies upriver of
other dams that are only beginning to get fish passage facilities. Biologists
and salmon advocates hope that once these "fish lifts" are installed
to carry the salmon over the dams, salmon will again have access to spawning
habitat.
But with as many as five dams still between the best habitat and the ocean,
salmon recovery could be slower than that of other species.
"There is no active salmon restoration now on the Kennebec," said John
Burrows, a representative of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
For Viles and other anglers, the return of striped bass to a stretch above
Augusta is among the most noticeable and pleasing changes. The fish, which grow
to more than 50 pounds in the river, are powerful fighters and exciting quarry
as they whip the surface into a boil chasing alewife and blueback herring.
"I got my first striper a month after they opened up the dam," Viles
said. "Right about then I joined Trout Unlimited."
The old river returns after decades behind a dam
The longer the river ran free, the cleaner it got. Silt deposited for nearly two
centuries was washed away with the spring floods. The river renourishes sand
bars and cuts new meandering channels across old flats. Bedrock juts out from
beneath the mud revealing the geology of the ages. A visitor to Viles' home
found an arrowhead exposed along the bank.
Even more astonishing to Viles, the old bog smell is gone. His wife now swims in
a river that was a cesspool for decades.
"Years of history have just been washed away," he said.
One piece of history that was restored when the dam was removed was the original
names of the rapids on the river. Brooke discovered that the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers surveyed the river in 1826 and produced a map. Even before the dam
breaching lowered the river, rapids like Six Mile Falls, Petty's, Bacon's and
Babcock were identified and named.
The day after the dam came out, Brooke became the first person in 160 years
to canoe through Six Mile Falls.
"It was spectacular," he said.
Before the breaching, Viles used to enjoy motoring his canoe through the fast
waters over the inundated Six Miles Falls. He was not prepared for his feelings
when he rediscovered the ledges and rocks that drop the river three feet after
the dam was gone.
"I walked down the slope and waded through the rapids listening to all
that gurgling water," Viles said. "I haven't needed much therapy
since."
Dam's owner still thinks the dam should have stayed
Once the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled that the dam had to be
removed, Isaacson, the dam's owner, sat down with opponents and worked out a
settlement that relieved him of the costs of its removal. But he hasn't changed
his view that the dam should still be standing.
He remains in the energy business as an agent for industries, institutions and
even government, buying natural gas, electricity and other deregulated energy
sources on the open market. One of his hydroelectric projects recently became
the first dam in Maine to be certified for its low impact on a river.
"I'm interested in it personally, but as a business, I've moved
on," he said.
Isaacson's skeptical the Kennebec is going through the transformation state
biologists and environmentalists say.
"I could still be fighting this, but I just don't think it's worth
it," he said.
But when electricity rates rise to eight cents a kilowatt hour, which would
have brought him a good profit, as they have since the dam came out, "Then
I'm not so sure," he said.
When the dam was removed, most of Maine's political leadership, both Republicans
and Democrats, city leaders and environmentalists, sat on the east side of the
river celebrating. But on the west side, former mill workers and their families,
mostly of French Canadian descent, watched, many crying.
"Rivers are always divisive," said Felicia Stockford, a former
teacher who recently opened a lingerie store in the downtown near the river.
Arthur Perry used to cut ice used to preserve fish and meat at the dam. Now 80,
he's resigned to the changes.
"It's been good for fish," he said.
More dams will come down now, after Kennebec restoration
The success of the Edwards Dam removal has prompted an even more ambitious river
restoration project on the Penobscot River just north of the Kennebec. The
Penobscot has the largest remaining population of Atlantic salmon left in New
England, with about 1,500 salmon returning annually.
Two dams will be removed, and fish passage facilities will be installed at
other dams to open up 500 miles of the river to salmon under a negotiated
agreement among utilities, environmentalists, Indian tribes and the Bush
administration.
The Fort Halifax dam on the Sebasticook, a tributary to the Kennebec, also is
slated for breaching under a settlement between the owner, Florida Power and
Light, environmentalists and the state. Residents of Winslow, who own homes on
the reservoir behind the dam, have filed three lawsuits against FERC and the
state seeking to stop the dam breaching.
The loss to lakeside landowners will be far more significant than what Viles
experienced, said Ken Fletcher, a natural resources consultant and Republican
state representative leading "Save Our Sebasticook," the group
opposing breaching.
The reservoir will drop from 415 acres to 160 acres, especially in August and
September. Edward's 1,000-acre reservoir lost a few hundred acres spread over 17
miles, so it was less noticeable.
Their concern is similar to that of Lewiston residents who would lose the large
reservoir behind Lower Granite Dam if it and three other dams are breached on
the Snake.
"If this dam gets taken out, it will just be a mud hole," said
MaryEllen Fletcher, Ken's wife.
Officials did not include Winslow residents and others affected by the Fort
Halifax Dam breaching in the decision, leaving many costs and issues unresolved,
Fletcher said. The city will need a new sewer pipe that will cost up to
$400,000. Snowmobilers who have long used the frozen lake for access will be
unable to cross the river, which will no longer freeze.
Fletcher is convinced the relatively cheap fish passage technology already
used on the dam will continue to contribute to fish restoration.
"We believe if an objective analysis was done, the conclusion will be
before we take out this dam, we should at least give the dam owner the chance to
show his alternative technology works," Fletcher said.
But if the state and environmentalists will make the city, snowmobilers and
others affected by the dam breaching whole, Fletcher said he and his group could
support the breaching.
"We think if they had to pay the costs, they'd say try the
alternatives," he said.
'I bet people there really enjoy it when it happens'
Viles can relate to Fletcher's concerns — they are the same ones he had
when removing the Edwards Dam was proposed. His little town of Sydney was not
consulted. He felt left out of the decision.
"I empathize with them as someone who was a landowner and someone who was
facing change," Viles said. "I can say from my experience, I bet
people there really enjoy it when it happens."
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