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After 276 Years, Presumpscot Fish Finally Can Start Swim Home

November 01, 2010 - WESTBROOK -- It started to go bad for the fish in 1734. That’s when Col. Thomas Westbrook constructed a dam at the Presumpscot River’s lower falls to run a sawmill, blocking fish passage to traditional spawning grounds.

The name Presumpscot originated from local culture and means “many falls” or “many rough places.”

Since 1734, it’s been the roughest of places for fish. The fish did have allies — mostly local Indians who depended on the fishery for food.

After protesting for years, the Indians destroyed the sawmill in 1741. Here’s how Hugh McClellan described it in his 1903 history of the town of Gorham.

“Cloudman was accustomed to run the mill all night, and one night in 1741, he saw an Indian creeping up with his gun, who twice attempted to fire at him, but his gun snapped and misfired. Cloudman hurled the bar used for placing the log on the carriage at the Indian. It hit him on the head and killed him instantly. He then threw the body into the wheel-pit, shut down the mill and went home. The night following, the Indians burned the mill.”

That action wasn’t enough to save the fish.

The river’s name should have been changed from “many falls” to “many dams.” No other Maine river had its entire hydro head developed with dams.

Today, after removal of the Smelt Hill Dam in 2002, there are eight dams in the 27 miles between Sebago Lake and Casco Bay.

From 1734 to the mid-1850s, there were lots of protests and many filings requiring fish passage at dams. Some were actually built.

But for the next 100 years, the river was used for industrial waste from gunpowder, textile, pulp and paper and other mills. Few fish could live in that water.

With the enactment of the federal Clean Water Act — championed by Maine’s Sen. Edmund Muskie — in the early 1970s, the river began its recovery.

But that recovery didn’t include fish. Their long road back started in 2002 with the removal of the Smelt Hill Dam. And they began jumping their second hurdle on Oct. 5, 2010, when Dan Martin, commissioner of Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, signed an order directing S.D. Warren Co. to construct and maintain fish passage at the Cumberland Mills Dam — the first dam encountered by anadromous (migrating) fish as they attempt to access traditional spawning grounds.

Here’s the really good news. Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection, in an April 30, 2003, water quality certificate issued to S.D. Warren, requires all five of the company’s Presumpscot hydro projects to provide fish passage — but only after fish passage is provided at the Cumberland Mills Dam.

The first facility, at the Saccarappa Project, must be operational no later than two years after fish passage is provided at Cumberland Mills. Fish passage at the other dams is based on specific trigger numbers of returning fish.

The Board of Environmental Protection, Cumberland County Superior Court, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld the DEP’s decision.

The Cumberland Mills dam decision did not come quickly or easily. Friends of the Presumpscot River — led by Dusti Faucher, Sandy Cort and others, approached American Rivers more than 12 years ago for help in achieving this goal. And lots of Class 5 rapids were encountered in getting to Commissioner Martin’s Oct. 5 directive.

The list of Presumpscot River heroes is long, including Sen. Muskie and George Mitchell, lots of folks at the Departments of Environmental Protection, Marine Resources, and Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Pat Kelleher and the Coastal Conservation Commission, Marine Resources Commissioner George LaPointe, the team at American Rivers, the many Friends of the Presumpscot River, and Hallowell attorney Ron Kreisman, who, according to one observer, “caught the river restoration bug on the Kennebec and continued on to coordinate and shepherd this effort through multiple court actions to conclusion.”

“Someone should write this up as a major success story,” exclaimed my friend.

Well, I’ve done the best I could, certainly leaving some out who deserve credit, mindful that there will be more credit to hand out when the fish finally make their way home.

There will be lots of them, up to 136,000 American shad, 450,000 river herring, 200,000 alewives and 1,000 Atlantic salmon.

This amazing recovery does not come soon enough for the Rockomeecook Tribe that harvested fish for food and corn fertilizer along the Presumpscot River.

But when fish passage is finally provided at the last dam, it will mark the end of nearly 300 years of mistakes and mismanagement. That’s worthy of celebration.

Wednesday October 27th, 2010

by George Smith
Kennebec Journal column


Lakes:
Regions: Sebago


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