Bacl to the Past

With that, the Hatches formed a 501c3 citizens’ organization that they called Scribner’s Mill Preservation, Inc. and to which Scribner and his two sisters deeded mill and property.

The strong spring flow took out some of the mill’s supports because IF&W had widened the breach. “Whether this was intentional or not we don’t know,” Scribner’s Mill Preservation, Inc. president, Roy Clark, grimly informed me. But if IF&W had plotted against the mill, it quickly reversed course, giving Scribner’s Mill Preservation, Inc. permission to build a granite barrier to divert water.

As restoration of the building progressed, Scribner’s Mill Preservation, Inc. decided to restore historical function as well—in the form of an up-and-down “sash saw” to be powered directly from the river via a water wheel. In order to recreate this historical function, the river will have to be dammed again, so in 2007 the group applied to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to do just that. According to Roy Clark, there won’t be any commercial lumber production, just demonstrations of log cutting—mostly for tour groups on summer weekends. But the dam will be there 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Anglers, fish managers and environmentalists have pled with Scribner’s Mill Preservation, Inc. to forget the dam and simulate water power with a hidden electric motor or even provide real water power by pumping water into a high holding tank. When I asked Clark why his outfit didn’t opt for one of these alternatives he explained that it simply didn’t like them: “We’ve concluded that the best way to make this world-class mill authentic is to use real water power.”

And I had this exchange with Marilyn Hatch:

“Why couldn’t you do all this with electricity? Why do you have to dam a salmon river to make a history lesson?”

MH: “You’d have to understand 1847 technology to really understand why you can’t use electricity.”

“I understand they didn’t have electricity back then. I’m just saying use electricity for a simulation. Why couldn’t you run power to the wheel that turns this thing? No one would know if you put the motor underneath the building. People would get the idea.”

MH: “We don’t have enough kilowatts.”

“If you don’t have sufficient power, you run a new line. But what about the alternative of pumping water up to a storage tank?”