Saturday, May 21, 2016
Ellsworth American story
Residents will decide the fate of the Orland Village Dam during a vote ahead of the annual Town Meeting.
Residents will vote on whether to keep and maintain the dam or work to have it removed.
The vote will be done by secret ballot from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Orland Community Center on Friday, June 14, and the result will be announced at Town Meeting the following day.
In the 1930’s, the Maine Seaboard Paper Co. built the dam to create a water supply for its Bucksport mill, but the Narramissic River was never used for that purpose.
Verso Paper owned the dam until 2010, when it turned ownership over to the town.
Since then, the Orland Dam Committee has raised funds for several rounds of feasibility studies by the engineering firm Stantec, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), The Nature Conservancy and Maine Sea Grant to determine feasible options for what to do with the dam.
Those studies determined that the two most reasonable options are either for the town to pay for annual dam maintenance and future repairs or to work toward removing the dam completely.
Annual dam and fish run maintenance costs $7,000 in addition to future repairs. The dam has a life expectancy of about 30 years and it has been 17 since its last repair.
“The liability of keeping it is the cost of it in the future,” said committee Chairman John Barlow. “There could be major expenditures in the future.”
If the dam remains in place, the town would also be responsible for complying with federal fisheries regulations because of the existence of several species, including two threatened species.
The cost of dam removal is $500,000. The NOAA Fisheries Service is ready to help fund the removal because the river is seen as an environmental asset.
“Those funds are available right now should they decide to vote on removal,” Barlow said.
If voters do not decide to remove the dam this year, but change their minds in the future, the town would have to come up with that money itself.
“They aren’t going to just hold on to the money for us,” Barlow said.
The watershed is considered by NOAA to have the potential for restoration of several native fish habitats for species such as alewives and rainbow smelt among others. Matt Bernier, civil engineer and fisheries habitat restoration specialist with NOAA, said that since the fish ladder is only accessible at high tide, fewer fish are able to migrate upstream.
The Narramissic River once had the third-highest alewife population in the state, but the fishery has been in decline since alewives have difficulty getting through the narrow passage.
“There are problems with the downstream passage as well for alewives, without having the downstream passage at the site,” Bernier said. According to NOAA, if the dam were removed, several other fish species and possibly marine mammals might be able to swim in and out with the tide.
While dam removal has its ecological and financial benefits, it also has its disadvantages.
“Aesthetics are the main thing,” Barlow said. “What will it look like? We have seen some options, but there are still some unknowns.”
Fire protection is also a concern if the dam is removed.
Orland Fire Chief Bobby Conary is wary of dam removal, saying it will be difficult for firefighters to quickly access a water source should a fire break out in that part of the village.
“The bottom line is that I would hate to lose it because it is such a great water source right there,” he said. “It’s a historical part of town and it is probably one of the most congested areas we have.”
Conary said that should the town vote on dam removal, the department would fight fires the way it does in other areas of town that are not close to water sources.
“We will do whatever it takes to do fire suppression, whether the dam is there or not,” he said.
According to Barlow, the half-million dollar price tag for dam removal also includes funding for securing water for firefighting and determining how many homeowners’ wells would be susceptible to salt water intrusion.
“We don’t think many wells would be affected,” Barlow said.
The river’s current also will become much faster and work would need to be done on the two nearby bridges that would see saltwater intrusion.
Researchers also are studying the presence of a mercury hotspot beneath the dam.
Even if voters decide on removal, nothing will happen to the dam overnight. Removal would require permits and approval from groups ranging from historical to environmental and archaeological.
“It will be a number of years if it is ever removed,” Barlow said.
There will be an Orland Village Dam forum at 6 p.m. on June 1 at the Orland Community Center, where residents will have the opportunity to speak with Bernier and a Stantec engineer about the options for the dam.
Read the story in The Ellsworth American.
