Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

June 10, 2012

Recovering a river

Demolition of the Great Works Dam on the Penobscot, starting this week, is part of an ambitious restoration project that will open 1,000 miles of waterways to Atlantic salmon.

By Tom Bell tbell@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

After 13 years of legal, political and engineering work, the largest-ever river restoration project in eastern North America begins Monday morning, when a 40-ton excavator aims its percussion hammer at the defunct concrete fishway of the Great Works Dam on the Penobscot River.

The $62 million project, to be completed in 2014, includes removing two dams and improving fish passages at two others. In the end, 1,000 miles of the Penobscot and its tributaries will be accessible to Atlantic salmon and other native sea-run fish for the first time in nearly two centuries.

Maine has removed 18 dams since 1999, when the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River was demolished. But the impact of those projects is modest compared with the restoration of the Penobscot, Maine's largest river, says Amy Kober, a spokeswoman for American Rivers.

Kober says the Penobscot River project is viewed as a model for other river basins around the world because it improves fish access without cutting the amount of power hydroelectric companies can produce.

"From our perspective, the Penobscot project is one of the most significant river restoration efforts our country has ever seen," she says.

Ken Salazar, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, will be among the dignitaries speaking at a 10:15 a.m. news conference at the dam Monday. Salazar will also attend a community luncheon on Indian Island sponsored by the Penobscot Indian Nation, which played a critical role in the project.

Hundreds of people are expected. Because public access to the dam is limited, organizers are encouraging people to watch the news conference live-streamed on a 16-foot-wide screen in Sockalexis Hall, the bingo hall on Indian Island. There will also be van tours to the dam site.

Bill Taylor, president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, describes the project as the best, and perhaps last, chance to restore a major run of wild Atlantic salmon in the United States. "This may well turn out to be the most important day for Atlantic salmon in the past 200 years," he says.

'BAD FALLS WITH THE BAD CARRY'

The Great Works Dam is a 1,020-foot-long mass of concrete, timber and cribwork situated on a bend in the river between Old Town and Bradley, just downstream from Indian Island, the Penobscot Indian reservation. The river drops 17 feet over a third of a mile and without the dam, there would be rapids.

The Penobscots called this stretch of river "the bad falls with the bad carry," because it has a difficult portage, says James Eric Francis Sr., tribal historian.

The original Great Works Dam was built in the 1830s as a "wing dam," parallel to the shore, to provide water for sawmills. It was partially demolished around 1887, when the current dam was installed by the Penobscot Chemical Fibre Co., the first pulp mill on the river.

The dam and generating facilities were sold several times over the next century, and purchased by PPL Corp. in 2000. The dam was sold to the Penobscot Trust in 2010 as part of the landmark river restoration agreement.

The Veazie Dam -- scheduled for demolition in 2013 and 2014 -- is eight miles downstream from Great Works and is the last physical barrier to juvenile salmon reaching Penobscot Bay and the sea. Scientists monitor returning salmon at fishways and traps at the Veazie Dam. Most are taken to hatcheries or trucked upriver.

Before construction of dams on the river, an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 adult salmon spawned on the Penobscot annually. Last year, scientists counted 3,100 salmon, the best run in the past 30 years. Nearly all of the fish were raised in hatcheries.

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