Sebago Chapter of Trout Unlimited combined Monday with the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership to remove the Randall Mill Dam on Chandler Brook, a Royal River tributary.

Maine Trout Unlimited Council provided additional funding support. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Gulf of Maine Coastal Program provided surveying for the project, Maine Rivers assisted with project coordination. The prime contractor was Caribou Springs LLC of Gilead.

A dam had been located on the site since 1796, possibly earlier, and had supported lumber and grist mills in its day. It had continued to operate into the 1950s until the mill deteriorated; not a stick of the mill structure remains.

The dam itself had been partially breached in the mid- 1990s by high water.

Sebago Trout Unlimited President Patrick O’Shea said, “We are proud to have reconnected three miles of stream habitat to Chandler Brook and the main stem of the Royal River.

“Fish need to be able to freely move through watersheds to be able to reach spawning, nursery and feeding areas — and survive low water conditions. Even the breached dam was a problem during lower flows.”

Dam owner Fred Fauver said, “The dam no longer served any useful purpose, and was both a liability and an obstruction to the free movement of aquatic life up and down the watershed. The manmade obstruction has been removed, and we all can’t wait to see how Mother Nature details the now freeflowing stream.”

Project Coordinator Steve Heinz said, “My most gratifying moment came just as the heavy equipment was finishing up when I saw two small fish swimming up stream. May they be the first of many.”

“The Royal River watershed has such great potential,” he said. “It even had an Atlantic salmon run before the lower river was dammed in the 1840s. The two head-oftide dams in Yarmouth are one of the worst things that you can do ecologically to the river system. They are keeping sea-run fish out of the watershed and this impacts everything up stream. We hope the people of Yarmouth will be good stewards and decide that it’s time for those dams to go.”

After harnessing its rivers for power for decades, Maine is in an era of breaching dams to restore fish habitats.

The Veazie Dam was removed from the Penobscot River last month.

On July 17, 2008, after more than five years of legal battles,

FPL Energy Maine Hydro breached the Fort Halifax Dam in Winslow.

And in 1999, the Edwards Dam was removed from the Kennebec River in a landmark case in which federal agencies ordered its decommissioning and removal against the operator’s wishes.