Northwest can learn from removal of Maine dam

[Ithaca 37]

A continent, and a world of differences, separates Maine from the lower Snake River.

Yet the Northwest can still learn something from dam removal in the Northeast.

• Lesson one: Fish and rivers can recover quickly when dams are removed.

• Lesson two: People can agree to preserve salmon by getting rid of the dams that kill fish — and by making up for the hydroelectricity and other economic amenities that are lost when the dams are gone.

Learning to embrace change

The Edwards Dam, built a half century before Idaho became a state, came down in 1999 under orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and amid enthusiasm and skepticism.

Fish advocates had won more than a decade-long fight to remove one of the obstacles for Atlantic salmon that migrate up the Kennebec River. Recreationists were losing a reservoir they had enjoyed all their lives. Said George Viles, an outdoor enthusiast who lives along the river, "I knew what I had and even though I listened to the scientists, there was no sure thing."

Fish numbers have increased. Not just Atlantic salmon — which still must navigate around as many as five dams to reach spawning habitat. Striped bass and the alewife have rebounded. Water quality has improved.

Viles, who resented the dam removal six years ago, now says the change has been for the better.

Change didn't come easy on the Kennebec and would be monumentally more complicated in the Northwest. The Edwards Dam provided only 3.5 megawatts of power in a region that doesn't depend much on hydropower; the four lower Snake River dams produce nearly 1,200 megawatts, enough to power the city of Seattle. Breaching the lower Snake dams, and losing seaports in Lewiston and eastern Washington, would cost the area more than 1,600 jobs and $36 million in earnings, according to a University of Idaho study.

Boaters and water skiers in cities such as Lewiston would lose a slackwater reservoir they've enjoyed for years.

Resistance to change is understandable, especially when change would be dramatic. But rivers and fish do not resist change; the Kennebec and its aquatic life have thrived on it. That's important to remember as the Pacific Northwest debates whether to keep four dams in the lower Snake River — or remove portions of them to give Idaho wild salmon their best, and possibly only, chance at recovery.

Learning to compromise

The Edwards Dam came down after a fight and over its owner's objection. But on another Maine river, the Penobscot, a broad coalition has agreed to get rid of two dams.

The June 2004 deal gives PPL Corp., the utility that operates the dams, $25 million to remove them. The utility also gets to increase power production at six other dams, while environmental groups agreed to drop challenges to the other dams.

The agreement opens up 500 miles of the Penobscot, which, according to the U.S. Interior Department, has the nation's largest remaining Atlantic salmon population.

This illustrates that consensus, while difficult, is not impossible. And a regional solution — involving political leaders, utilities, water users, shippers, Indian tribes and fish advocates across the Northwest — represents the only real way to save our wild salmon and provide the region the economic surety it needs.

We can and must build on success, the negotiated Nez Perce Tribe water rights agreement that passed Congress last year and passed the Legislature and the tribal council in March. It will take time and patience to apply a similar process across four states. But Idaho's wild salmon continue to struggle after more than 10 years on the federal endangered species list; it's time to start talking.

The politics of the Northwest is different than the politics of the Penobscot. The Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that markets power from the lower Snake dams, staunchly defends the status quo. The Bush administration flatly rejects lower Snake dam removal, even though Interior Secretary Gale Norton hailed the Penobscot dam agreement as historic.

And when our region's political leaders need to focus on the big picture, they're fixated on side issues. One of the biggest fights over salmon this summer focuses on the Fish Passage Center, the tiny federal agency that analyzes salmon numbers. Some politicians, such as Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, want to cut off the agency's $1.3 million budget. Others, including Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and several House Democrats from Oregon and Washington, rightly want to spare the agency.

We side with Crapo and the Democrats — but lament the fact that this whole debate is a distraction from the task at hand.

Consensus-building requires time and focus. For inspiration, our leaders can look at the Nez Perce deal. Or the Penobscot.

 

[Ithaca 37]

Removing dam transformed a Maine river
Kennebec project may hold lessons for Snake River dams

_____________________________________________________________

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."

 

[BuzzH]

If you were to listen to some of the dimwits who post in SI, they'd tell you theres NO WAY dams will be breached...

They would also tell you how bad it is, how you cant deal with the silt problems, pollution, water quality...

All just a bunch of BS lies...take the dams out and you get your river back and all the good things that go with them.

The Snake River dams are toast...at this point not a matter of if, just when.

 

[Ten Bears]

Not so much a matter of when, but how it should best be done is what concerns me. That, and I believe there are better ways to make fish passage through/around the dams.

 

[BuzzH]

Ten Beers,

Thankfully, you arent the one making the important decisions.

The 100+ fisheries experts from a couple dozen agencies are in agreement with breaching...they've seen too many other stupid "best ways to make fish passages" fail, and fail, and fail, and fail...

 

[Ten Bears]

And all that coming from a arid ground gubermint employee. Stay on dry ground BUZZ, and fish for sport, and keep reading your books.

 

[BuzzH]

Ten beers,

Did they ask you all the tough questions about fisheries when you supposedly completed your GED?

I've always pretty much stuck to the dry ground...with the exception of the 3 years I managed fisheries/riparian/wetlands on several thousand acres owned by some ol' boy from Georgia who owns the Atlanta Braves. I also served on the Wetlands Protection Advisory Council in Montana by appointment from the Fish and Game Director and Governor.

Other than that, I've pretty much stuck to upland management.

 

[Ten Bears]

So being connected to a wealthy businessman, and then being a political appointee means, bottomline, you know what?