Following the completion last week of a lengthy and often controversial permitting process, The Chewonki Foundation can shift its focus to public education and the physical removal of Lower Montsweag Brook Dam.
About 35 people attended a discussion and guided tour of the dam hosted by the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust and Chewonki on Aug. 12.
“Two days ago we got our last permit,” Project Manager Dan Creek said during a presentation in Chewonki’s Chapin Hall. With the final permit, from the Army Corps of Engineers, in hand, Chewonki is moving quickly toward demolition.
The bidding process is already underway. By the end of next week Chewonki will select a contractor, Creek said. Creek expects contractor “mobilization” by early September and, complete removal of the dam before the end of fall.
“You’re going to walk out there and not know there was a dam there,” Creek said.
With the lower dam inching ever closer to its final, explosive demise, Chewonki has already set its sights on another, smaller dam further upstream.
According to former Chewonki President Don Hudson, the Central Maine Power Company (CMP) plans to transfer the upper dam and about 30 acres of adjoining land to Chewonki as part of a mitigation plan for the Maine Power Reliability Project.
CMP representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The transfer, Hudson said, could take place within “the next couple of months.” Chewonki will commission a feasibility study, similar to but “simpler” than the study for the lower dam. The upper dam is “much, much smaller,” Hudson said, and researchers can use much of the data from the first feasibility study.
“Dan [Creek] and I will continue to work on the project to its conclusion,” Hudson said.
Hudson said removal of the upper dam could take place within two years.
Moving on, Hudson detailed the history of Chewonki’s involvement with the dam, dating back to the decommissioning of the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in 1997.
The state of Maine asked Maine Yankee to look for projects in the area to include in a Natural Resources Damages Restoration Plan and Settlement Agreement (NRDAR), between the parties. Maine Yankee listed 15 projects before eventually selecting three, including the restoration of diadromous fish passage to Montsweag Brook.
Diadromous fish migrate between freshwater and marine habitats. The project’s goal is to restore passage for species including river herring, rainbow smelt, brook trout and American Eel.
Chewonki signed the agreement as a third party, receiving the dam and the surrounding land along with a mandate to restore fish passage.
As Creek explained, dam removal was the most efficient and least expensive method to restore fish passage.
An important related benefit, according to Hudson’s presentation, is to “restore natural ecosystem function to the watershed allowing for natural flow and connectivity to the ocean.”
Secondary goals, according to Hudson’s presentation, include the facilitation of “public access to [Montsweag Brook] and related lands” and the opportunity for “hands-on education” in connection with the restoration process.
The planned mile-long trail near the dam site will link to the Back River Trail and provide an opportunity to witness the restoration process firsthand. Chewonki will not, as previously discussed, continue the trail to the upper dam, three miles upstream. “It’s impractical,” Hudson said. “There’s nothing at the north end.”
Foot traffic along the narrow, 50-foot corridor might “eventually produce more damage than benefit,” he said.
Chewonki also hopes to purchase a small parcel of land from Maine Yankee for a parking area and informational kiosk.
For the next 5-15 years, students from Wiscasset High School, Bath’s Morse High School and Chewonki’s Semester School, as well as Chewonki campers and summer interns, will help monitor the restoration of the brook, Hudson said.
Chewonki is “refining [its] vision,” working with scientists from the University of Southern Maine and seeking funding for the educational program, which will include an interactive website to present student research.
After the discussion, Hudson fielded questions from the audience. One man asked about the potential for post-restoration recreational fishing in the brook.
Hudson said Chewonki will not introduce fish to the brook, at least for the first five years of restoration. “We’d like to see what nature does,” he said.
Following the discussion, attendees piled into two Chewonki vans and a handful of personal vehicles for the short drive to the dam. Chewonki’s right-of-way to the dam begins near Rt. 1, at a small turn-off near the Wiscasset-Woolwich town line.
Landis Hudson, Executive Director of Maine Rivers, a non-profit organization and major donor to the restoration project, applauded Chewonki for their diligence in pursuing dam removal. “This is something that needs to be done all over the state,” she said. “There are a terrific number of decrepit dams all over the state.”
At the dam, where the gate is open and the lake a mere trickle, Lynne Flaccus, Chewonki’s Head Naturalist, spoke about the dewatering process and early efforts to establish vegetation on the banks of the brook, muddy and desolate after more than four decades underwater.
Three times since Chewonki began draining the dam in late May, the impoundment has settled to its current level before rains have re-filled it. The first time, only 36 hours passed before the nearly dry brook was full again.
Flaccus and her team have spread seed along the banks to stabilize the earth and prevent erosion. Flaccus pointed out clumps of tall grass on the upper banks that, she said, have been flooded twice and survived unharmed. Native plants, too, are beginning to emerge.
“Lots of maple seedlings are coming up,” Flaccus said.
Restoration will dramatically improve the health of the brook, Don Hudson said, and the improvement will reach beyond fish passage.
“We don’t talk a lot about the relationship of these kind of projects to climate change,” Hudson said, but preparation for climate change, including an increase of up to 30 percent in rainfall over the next 50-100 years, is “another rationale for habitat restoration,” he said.
When marshes around rivers and brooks are healthy, they act as a sponge, soaking up excess precipitation and reducing the negative impacts of flooding, Hudson explained.
Through the destruction of marshes, “we’ve compromised natural systems for managing heavy rainfall,” Hudson said.
The increase in rainfall is “already in the pipeline,” he said, “even if everyone stopped driving cars tomorrow.”
Dr. Fred Cichocki, a fisheries biologist, led the group down a rocky path to the brook downstream of the dam, where, with help from Heyburn’s young children, Caroline and Henry, he demonstrated the fish sampling Chewonki will practice at the site for years to come.
Using traps, nets and five-gallon buckets, Cichocki produced a tiny largemouth bass, as well as pumpkinseed sunfish, eels and a creek chub.
Students and Chewonki employees will conduct similar samplings at a series of points below and above the dam, providing a “snapshot” that “begins to tell the story of the fish populations that are in the brook,” Hudson said.
As part of the process, educators will “help the students understand how to interpret that information,” Hudson said.
