Bacl to the Past

Nevertheless, on October 24, 2008, DEP issued a draft order to block the project, stating that, despite the educational and economic opportunities a new dam would provide, these benefits would be outweighed by the harm the dam could do to Sebago’s landlocked-salmon fishery.

It’s conceivable that the agency will release its final order by the time you read this; but that wouldn’t mean a lot. The decision, however it turns out, will likely be appealed to the Board of Environmental Protection, Superior Court or both. “Given the passion for the request to have a dam and also to forbid a dam, the debate could rage for years,” DEP’s Dana Murch told the Portland Press Herald.

“We expect some kind of compromise that neither side is going to be completely happy about, an IF&W staffer told me. Compromises—as in compromising salmon runs—are also authentic, historical functions of dams. But, as Brautigam points out, “in this day and age” they are “very disconcerting”—especially when they involve the nation’s most important landlocked-salmon population. Still, proponents are unmoved and unconcerned. Perhaps this is because, with no exception I could find, they have a vast and impressive misunderstanding of fish.

Consider the proclamations of respected journalist and Maine historian Dan Soucy, the most widely read tub-thumper for re-damming. “Fish ladders,” he writes, “have been proven time and again to be more than adequate for the passage of fish over or around obstacles like dams.” Yeah, you know—like the ones on the Columbia River system that have presided over the extinction of one salmon stock, the virtual extinction of another and helped place 12 others in 77 populations on the Endangered Species List.

And here’s Soucy’s lecture on dammed deadwater: “Another aspect to consider is that with the creation of the holding pond, which if I understand correctly will be about eleven acres, will also be another opportunity to develop new fishing opportunities.” Yeah, you know—like for sunfish, perch, hornpout, bass, pickerel, pike, fallfish, dace and suckers.

Marilyn Hatch makes Soucy sound almost learned: “In our fisheries report it very clearly states that the impoundment would not be warm and would not support warmwater predators.”

My response: “But isn’t it pretty clear that a 1.1-mile-long pond is going to produce warmwater predator fish; we kinda know that, right?”

MH: “But the predator fish they found were all juveniles; there were no adults.”

Me again: “Juveniles grow up, right?”

MH: “If they want to stay there. I don’t know where they go…. They say landlocked salmon do surprisingly well in warm water.”