There are several projects in the works to help restore alewife passage between Webber Pond and Muscongus Bay in Bremen. Successfully restoring passage to this spawning ground should be a big step in establishing a sustainable alewife run in Bremen, which recent federal law requires in order for a town to allow alewife fishing.
In order to spawn in Webber Pond, alewives must swim through Muscongus Brook, about a mile and half long stretch that crosses Rt. 32 twice.
For almost 10 years, Bremen resident David Wilkins and the Bremen Alewife Project has been working with local volunteers to restore fish passage in Muscongus Brook by building fish ladders and removing obstacles, such as the remnants of a massive stone wall.
Wilkins’ work will continue in the coming year, he said. On a snowy Dec. 23, Wilkins was knee-deep in Muscongus Brook with several volunteers hauling large stones out of a waterfall.
“Three fish ladders, four years, dozens of sandbags and hundreds of hours later, we can confidently say we know how to get alewives swimming up, into and through the [culverts] and into Webber Pond,” Wilkins wrote in an email to The Lincoln County News.
In that effort, Wilkins has been joined by Charlie Baeder and the Sheepscot River Watershed Council in a project to replace the culverts under the two Rt. 32 crossings.
Currently, the culverts are too small and smooth-bottomed to allow fish to swim upstream. The groups are working with the Maine Dept. of Transportation and several Maine and federal organizations to replace the culverts with either bridges or larger culverts that will allow fish passage.
Although the project is in its infancy, the SRWC received notice on Dec. 22 that they will receive $150,000 through the Maine Dept. of Environmental Protection, The Nature Conservancy and Army Corps of Engineers. They hope to receive a second large grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Rivers program. SRWC will know about the second grant in March, Baeder said.
Should they fail to receive the second grant, there are other funding sources SRWC is prepared to explore. “We’re going to keep at it until it’s through,” Baeder said.
The grant money will be used to provide a 50-50 match with DOT to pay for replacing the culverts, Baeder said.
The cost of the project won’t be known until DOT designs the culverts, but the initial estimate for the project is about $250,000 to $300,000 per culvert, Baeder said.
One of the culverts is “rotting out” and needs to be replaced anyway, Baeder said. The other culvert is worse from a fish passage situation. Because DOT and SRWC are splitting the cost of the replacement, DOT agreed to replace both culverts, Baeder said.
Although somewhat pricier than smaller culverts not designed for fish, the replacement cost shouldn’t be affected significantly by the considerations given to fish passage, Baeder said.
“From MDOT’s perspective, this brings in a lot of money that they wouldn’t have had,” Baeder said.
