Conservationists Cheer for a New Maine Dam

Conservationists who cheered the removal of a 162-year-old dam in Maine’s capital last year also welcomed the replacement of a dam on a backwoods river that was only slightly younger.

Removal of the Edwards Dam, which stretched 917 feet across the Kennebec River, completed the rebirth of a historically rich fishery. The dam, 40 miles upstream from the Atlantic Ocean, was the first hydroelectric dam in the country ordered removed by the U.S. government for protection of the environment.

Replacement of the Churchill Dam was seen by conservationists and outdoors enthusiasts as essential to the enjoyment of wilderness.

At a rededication ceremony in September, state Conservation Commissioner Ron Lovaglio called the Churchill Dam “the dam for the new millennium” that would preserve Maine’s prized Allagash Wilderness Waterway forever.

State Rep. John Martin, who has made trips down the river nearly every year since he was a boy, summed it up in a different way.

Without the dam, “people would not be able to enjoy the river in the summer,” said Martin, who made five Allagash trips last year alone.

The Edwards Dam was built in 1837 to supply downtown Augusta’s mills with power. But Churchill, in the northeastern corner of Piscataquis County in the heart of the Allagash, started off with a different purpose.

First known as Heron Lake Dam when it rose in 1846, it controlled water flows to help loggers float their wood to mills to the south rather than to Canada. Over the years, the local ecosystem adjusted to the changes created by the dam, said Dave Hubley of the Allagash Alliance, a group of about 200 members that pushed for the new dam.

The old Churchill was replaced in 1925, but the new dam was washed out by spring ice in 1954. A stone-and-cribwork structure was built in 1968, but it was designed to last 20 years at most. Logging-truck traffic over the structure weakened the dam, causing it to sag and deteriorate.

“The settling was happening so fast that it was difficult and in some cases impossible to open the gates,” said Herb Hartman of the state Bureau of Parks and Lands.

Had a forest fire broken out, it would have been risky to move bulldozers and firefighting equipment over the dam, Hartman said. Without a plan for repairs, the old dam would have had to be breached.

Gone would be a dam that slowed down the spring rush downstream but kept the water moving in the summer, while creating wetlands, preserving a habitat for fish like trout and keeping Churchill and Eagle lakes full.

Without it, you couldn’t float a canoe downstream to where the Allagash meets the St. John River in the summer.

Rather than being seen as an impediment, Churchill Dam, about 120 miles north of Bangor, was viewed as a key to maintaining the water levels and ecology of one of Maine’s most important recreational regions.

Still, voters were not convinced that the dam needed to be repaired and rejected bond issues to replace the dam in 1987 and 1990.

By the time the issue went before voters again in 1996, hunters and sport fishermen, environmentalists and contractors rallied with the Allagash Alliance behind a $3-million bond issue that included $1.4 million for the Churchill Dam.

Voters said yes.

Work began in 1997, and the old cribwork was replaced with a concrete structure designed to last a century. The 87-foot-long, 27-foot-wide dam, which includes six gates and a fishway, was essentially completed in 1998. It features a boat launch at the side.

The alliance’s Hubley said the new dam keeps a pledge the state made when the Allagash Wilderness Waterway was established in 1966.

“When you make a deal like that with the people, you have to keep your end of the deal,” Hubley said.

But some of the river’s users, and the Allagash Alliance itself, are not completely happy.

A motor vehicle access point was included in a management plan for the waterway. It is located in the narrows between Churchill and Eagle lakes, between two existing access points at Churchill Dam and Indian Stream.

The access area, Hubley said, will draw too many cars, trailers and people, and threatens the waterway’s wilderness nature.

Hubley said his group might have taken a different stance on the Churchill Dam project had he known the access area was coming.

Rick Denico, an angler who has been using the Allagash for 50 years, says the put-in point was there long ago and ought to be restored.

“I think the place is for all of us up there. I think fishermen ought to have just as much right to the waterway as canoeists,” said Denico, a retired chemical engineer.