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Town of Benton Awaits Alewives, But Still Can't Harvest

April 23, 2008 - BENTON -- The alewives are coming.

Sort of.

An estimated 2 million of the silvery, river herring are expected to show up at the confluence of
the Kennebec and the Sebasticook rivers below Fort Halifax Dam in Winslow in a couple of
weeks.

And each spring for the past couple of years, the town of Benton has been waiting for them.

The town has a license to harvest and sell alewives from the Sebasticook River during this
annual spawning run. Benton is the only community along the river with such a license.

But so far, the town has not been allowed to collect any fish for sale or for anything else, state
and local officials say.

"Each year we have to file with the Department of Marine Resources to keep our licensing
intact, just to comply with state of Maine regulations," said Mark Brown, chairman of the
Benton Board of Selectmen. "They haven't allowed any harvesting to be done in this town;
they've closed off all harvesting. I think it was because of the low numbers of alewives."
Tom Squiers, a scientist with the state Department of Marine Resources, said one of the reasons for the ban on harvesting alewives in Benton is the dam in Winslow.
"They can't get to Benton, where the harvest would occur," Squiers said. "Last year we pumped over 400,000 (alewives) but those were all destined to go up river to spawn, not to be harvested."
There are fishways or fish ladders in place along the Sebasticook from Benton, all the way to Sebasticook Lake.
He said Marine Resources annually pumps the alewives as they bunch up at the base of the Winslow dam and literally dump them over the dam for the five-mile run to the Benton Falls Hydroelectric Dam.
It is along that upstream migration that Benton plans to set up their harvesting plan.
Brown said the town plans to set up below the Benton Falls dam, on a small piece of land
owned by Central Maine Power Co. near the Winslow/Benton town line.

But so far, the harvest is on hold.

Squiers said there is no commercial harvesting of alewives currently below or above the
Winslow dam because of a switch in licensing from the Department of Inland Fisheries and
Wildlife to the Department of Marine Resources. Individuals who were commercially licensed
to take the alewives below the Winslow dam got in the way of the department's efforts to pump
and truck the fish over the dam, Squiers said.

He said the department is not taking sides on the fight over Fort Halifax Dam, but simply would
like to see fish passage there, may it be via a fish lift or breaching of the dam.

"As far as timing goes, we were looking for fish passage in 2003 at Forth Halifax," he said. "It
has cost extra funds and manpower to sort and truck; it's got us behind in that respect."

He said state officials simply want compliance with a 1998 agreement for fish passage at
Winslow.
Dam owner FPL Energy plans to remove the dam this summer, but two groups have come
forward to appeal the Winslow Planning Board's approval of the project.

Ken Fletcher, founder of the group Save Our Sebasticook which is attempting to keep the dam
in place, said he and other members are in favor of fish passage.

"We want fish passage at Fort Halifax Dam," Fletcher said. "Our position all along has been to
install a fish lift like the one at Benton."

Squiers said traditional runs of alewives are low all up and down the eastern seaboard due to
loss of habitat, pollution and barriers, such as dams. For now, he said, all alewives that are
moved over the Winslow dam will be spared the harvest as part of a conservation measure.

In July 2005, the state Department of Marine Resources granted the town exclusive rights to
harvest alewives from the Sebasticook River within the town's riverside boundaries. Harvest
could have begun the following year, but for the conservation measures that remain in place.

Once the harvest begins, the town has the authority to license people or companies who want to
harvest the fish.

The alewife is used today primarily by fishermen as lobster bait.

Benton officials say history is on their side.

"We were able to renew the license due to the historical fact that alewives were harvested
below the dam many years ago," Brown said. "It's basically a renewal of the old licensing."

Runs of alewives in the 1800s were an important commodity to communities along many rivers
and streams in Maine.

Locals would catch the 10- to 12-inch alewives and pickle them for food, or dry and smoke
them for use over the winter. In 1809, Benton selectmen ordered a mill dam to be torn down
because it blocked runs of alewives and shad on the Sebasticook River.

Historically, the town had similar harvest rights but lost access to sea-run fish when the Edwards
Dam was built on the Kennebec River in 1837.

The return of the alewives to the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers is linked to the breaching of
the Edwards dam in Augusta in April 1999. The following spring, thousands of the fish were
seen in Winslow for the first time in 162 years.

While the town will enjoy the profits some day form its licensing agreement, state marine
cautioned in 2005 that it was going to be necessary to limit the harvest to ensure the state's plan
for restoring fish to lakes and ponds in the Sebasticook watershed, Squires said.

The Department of Marine Resources has been stocking the watershed with adult, pre-spawner
alewives every year since 1985.


Tuesday April 22nd, 2008

by Doug Harlow
Morning Sentinel news story


Lakes:
Regions: Belgrade, Bangor


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