Good news for those whose livelihood and/or recreational pursuits involve Casco Bay. As noted in prior posts (6/17/11, 6/21/11, 5/8/12), for more than 4 decades Portland’s sanitary and stormwater sewer system was periodically overwhelmed by a storm event or snow melt, resulting in discharges of untreated wastewater that would close beaches and shellfish harvesting areas, and just plain old stink. Although legally obligated to address the situation under a 1993 consent decree that CLF was instrumental in obtaining, the City’s progress in doing so was sporadic until the past few years.

For this reason alone, it is worth celebrating the recent completion of the Baxter Boulevard storage project as noted by the Portland Press Herald. The two, million-gallon tanks, installed at a cost of $10 million, will provide critical storage during times of high volume (think the storms we had on Labor Day weekend) and literally keep at least 2 million gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater out of Casco Bay. While there is still a great deal to do to address the challenge that old infrastructure faces in light of the increasingly extreme storm events resulting from our changing climate, Portland continues to move in the right direction. CLF will continue to prod cities like Portland when necessary to clean up its act but is much happier to celebrate successes like this recent one when warranted.

Members of all groups participate in a Circle Dance lead by Passamaquoddy Leaders

It’s not often you get the chance to celebrate such a clear victory for the environment as the return of the alewife to the St. Croix River watershed.  As discussed in prior posts, a Maine law prohibiting alewives from accessing this fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam was repealed this past May and for the first time in two decades, alewives are able to return to their spawning grounds upriver.  The victory was celebrated not only with partners like Chief Clayton Cleaves of the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Downeast Salmon Federation but also with former adversaries, like the US EPA who we sued in order to break the logjam with the federal agencies and establish that the Maine law violated the Clean Water Act. For more background on the case and additional media coverage of this event, see these articles by MPBN and Bangor Daily News.

Sean Mahoney and son Owen hold one of the boards removed from the fish ladder

With the removal of this board  and six other just like it, the fish ladder is now open and alewives are returning to the St. Croix River. Work remains to be done on the St. Croix and it was heartening to witness representatives of the Federal trust agencies and the Passamaquoddy Tribe sign a statement of cooperation pledging to  work toward the complete restoration of the St. Croix River. CLF will continue to advocate for the restoration of alewives and blueback herring not only on the St. Croix River but in watersheds throughout New England. And just as importantly, CLF will be working to reduce the bycatch of these critical forage fish at sea when they are migrating back to their natal waters.

It was wonderful to share in the day with CLF board members Davis Pike and Anne Hayden, and CLF supporter Owen Mahoney, as well as other partners such as Lisa Pohlman of NRCM and Landis Hudson of Maine Rivers.  While much work remains, it is truly a thing to celebrate when we are able to reverse the damage we have done to our environment by building broad coalitions, using good science, holding accountable those who are entrusted to enforce the law, and, in this case, removing 7 boards from a fish ladder.

From left: Lisa Pohlman, Davis Pike, Sean Mahoney (with fish), Anne Hayden, and Landis Hudson

Alewives in Maine. Credit: Bremen Conservation Committee

After 18 years, Maine alewives can finally swim freely into their ancestral habitat on the St. Croix River.

On Monday, April 22^nd, with little fanfare legislation that essentially repeals a Maine law passed in 1995 that has prevented alewives from using existing fish ladders to surmount the Woodland  and the Grand Falls Dams on the St. Croix. The law comes into force without the usual fanfare because Governor LePage refused to sign it but also couldn’t veto it in light of its overwhelming support in the Legislature.

This victory caps a two-year effort by CLF advocates to restore a fishery that numbered close to 3 million before the 1995 law closed the fish ladder and the number of alewives dwindled to less than 10,000. The alewife, an anadromous fish that lives in the ocean but travels up rivers each spring to spawn, is a “keystone species” that provides food for many animals, birds and larger fish species native to Maine’s marine and fresh waters. In a classic case of fisheries mismanagement, despite its recognized importance, the fate of the alewife was sacrificed upon the altar of bad science and even worse politics.

Last year CLF successfully filed suit against the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act’s water quality standards, resulting in a conclusion by EPA that there was no “…sound scientific rationale for excluding indigenous river herring (or other migratory species) from the St. Croix River.” CLF then used that decision as a basis in a subsequent suit against the State to invalidate the law. We at CLF are pleased that these lawsuits, which received not just the support of the EPA, but also the many organizations across the state of Maine, including the Passamaquoddy Tribe, who have had their shoulder to this wheel for many years, helped to move the legislation to become a law.

“It’s a historic moment,” Rep. Madonna Soctomah, who represents the Passamaquoddy Tribe in support of the legislation, was quoted as saying in the Portland Press Herald. “It’s a really good day for Maine people and the environment.”

That’s a belief that was shared widely amongst Maine’s legislature. The Marine Resources Committee unanimously endorsed the bill, before it went on to pass by a margin of 123-24 in the House and 33-0 in the Senate.

It is truly an historic occasion and one that would not have been possible without the commitment and hard work of a coalition of fishermen, environmentalists, the Passamaquoddy Tribe and many others.

To be sure, there are still challenges to meet to ensure that the St. Croix native fisheries are fully restored to the watershed, including upcoming relicensing proceedings for the Vanceboro and Grand Lake dams further up the St. Croix River. We look forward to continuing to work with on those efforts, and to restoring not just the St. Croix but other rivers in Maine.

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For a full archive of CLF’s blog posts and updates on L.D. 72, click here or visit: http://www.clf.org/blog/tag/alewives/

The bill passed today will restore alewives, a key forage fish, to the St. Croix River, pictured here. Photo: CanadaGood @ flickr

We at CLF applaud today’s vote by the Maine state legislature to restore Alewives to their native habitat in the St. Croix River.

Today, the legislature voted to pass a bill that will reopen the fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam, allowing the key forage fish to reach 98% of the St. Croix. This vote caps a two-year effort by CLF advocates to restore a fishery that numbered close to 3 million until a state law closed the fish ladder and the number of alewives dwindled to less than 10,000. Last year CLF successfully filed suit against the EPA to enforce the Clean Water Act’s provision related to the state law and then filed suit against the State to invalidate that law.

This bill corrects a practice of fisheries mismanagement that has been allowed to stand for almost two decades. It properly places good science and the interest of many over the self interests of a few. While litigation is the principal tool of our trade, it is wonderful to see the Legislature right this wrong and we hope to be able to dismiss our case against the State soon.

Introduced in March 2013, the bill found strong support among a number of the groups invested and concerned with the restoration of the St. Croix River and its native fish. These groups include Maine fishermen, environmentalists, anglers, federal agencies, and the Passamaquoddy.

The alternative bill proposed by the LePage administration was a half-measure that would have still kept alewives from reaching most of their native habitat.

This vote ensures alewives will now return to the St. Croix River. It is exactly the result that our legal advocacy was aiming for, and we applaud it as an important step forward.

CLF has been blogging on this topic regularly. To read those posts, click here.

In the late 1980’s, more than 2.6 million alewives were counted at the head of tide on the St. Croix River.  That was, and remains, the largest run of this critical species in Maine and New England.  But politics and willful ignorance of the facts led to enactment of a law that closed off access to the upper St. Croix and reduced the numbers of alewives from 2.6 million to 900 by 2002.  It’s well past time to right this wrong, repeal the shortsighted and politically expedient law and restore alewives to the St. Croix.

The law at issue requires the owner of the Grand Falls Dam to keep the fishway at the structure – which works perfectly well – closed during the Spring return of alewives to their native waters. The law was passed in 1995 at the behest of a small but vocal minority of guides who claimed that the resurgence of alewives in the St. Croix River watershed was the root cause for a decline in the number of smallmouth bass in Spednic Lake.  A law requiring the owner of the Woodland Dam and the Grand Falls Dam to keep the fish passage closed was enacted as emergency legislation.  So instead of returning to the St. Croix and spawning in the millions, alewives literally ran into a concrete wall and their numbers dwindled from the millions to the hundreds.

13 years later, armed with two well researched and extensively reviewed scientific studies, one conducted by the Maine Department of Marine Resources and a study supported by Maine IF&W and DMR,  that proved conclusively that alewives not only had coexisted successfully for years with smallmouth bass in numerous lakes but also improved the water quality for those non-native fish, fisherman and other outdoor enthusiasts moved to repeal the law and once again allow alewives access to probably the most productive alewife habitat on the entire East Coast.  But the Legislature failed to right its wrong and allowed fish passage at only the Woodland Dam, meaning that alewives remain blocked from accessing 98% of their native habitat in the St. Croix River watershed.

The number of fish now counted in the River is in the thousands. The tragedy of the St. Croix is not just that the current law flies in the face of science and good wildlife management but also flies in the face of the good work that Maine has done with respect to alewife restoration on so many other rivers – the Presumpscot, the Kennebec, and the Penobscot to name three – and the importance that alewives play as a critical bait and forage fish for both our recreational and commercial species such as striped bass, Atlantic cod and lobsters.

Many of Maine’s rivers have healthy runs of alewives that have actually increased in numbers over the last decade, unlike other States on the Atlantic seaboard where the populations of alewives (and their cousins, blueback herring) have declined so steeply that there is a very good chance that they may be listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act later this year.

And just last week, hundreds of groundfishermen in Maine were given the sobering news that the number of Atlantic cod has also declined sharply, so much so that fishermen in Maine and New England have had the allowable number that they can catch reduced by almost 80%.   So it is beyond comprehension that Maine continues to enforce a law that prevents alewives from accessing the most productive habitat in the State, the St. Croix River.

Certainly that is the opinion of my organization, the Conservation Law Foundation, which last year took the EPA to Court to establish that the Maine law is not consistent with the Clean Water Act and this year is bringing the State to Court to establish that the Maine law runs afoul of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

But the time and expense of this litigation could be avoided if the Legislature does the right thing this year.  A bill introduced this session, L.D. 72, would repeal the current law and require the Commissioners of IF&W and DMR to ensure that the fishways at the Woodland and Grand Falls Dams allow unconstrained passage of alewives.  With Democrats and Republican legislators co-sponsoring the bill presented by Representative Soctomah of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, now is the time for the Legislature to fix this travesty and allow alewives to flourish once again in the St. Croix River.

This article was originally published in the March 2013 issue of the Maine Sportman. 

The effort to restore Alewives to the St. Croix River is about to go into full gear. In addition to our lawsuit challenging the state law that prevents Alewives from getting above the Grand Falls Dam, we are collaborating with other groups and the Passamaquoddy Indian Nation on a legislative solution as discussed in this recent story in the Maine Sunday Telegram. I’d like to take a second to add a couple of points to this fine story by Colin Woodard on the plight of alewives in the St. Croix River.

First, the so-called adaptive management plan that the LePage administration is promoting in a competing bill at the Legislature is, at this juncture, only supported by the LePage administration – it has never even been considered for adoption by the International Joint Commission, has been disavowed by the federal agencies that have jurisdiction over the River, and is not supported by the Canadian government. The lack of any support for the plan is appropriate because it mirrors the lack of any scientific support for its provisions and its inconsistency with sound fishery management that considers more than just the ups and downs of one sport fish.

Second, in a time of fiscal challenges, the legislation that CLF is supporting, L.D. 72, has no costs associated with it – all it requires is the removal of the board that currently blocks the existing fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam. That is not the case with the adaptive management plan; annual costs for that plan will be at least $50,000 and in some years could be as much as $100,000.

Third, while the Maine Professional Guides Association may be the only groupthat continues to doubt the science that very clearly establishes that alewives and smallmouth bass do not compete for food or habitat, its executive director, Don Kleiner, is not bashful about praising the value of alewives to the smallmouth bass fishery in other forum, such as in this recent newsletter. As Mr. Kleiner noted, ”in the Saint George drainage we are fortunate to have large numbers of sea run alewives that come to lay their eggs in the ponds each spring. As the small alewives begin to move back to sea with the first rains, all of the predator fish begin to feed actively. Yesterday I was down in White Oak Pond with clients and many of the bass that they caught were actually potbellied from all of the feed they have been enjoying.”

Mr. Kleiner’s inconsistency mirrors the State’s inconsistency in its management of alewives on the St. Croix River as opposed to its management of that fishery in every other river in Maine. It’s time for the Legislature to correct itself and remove this inconsistency from the State’s otherwise laudable efforts to restore alewives to Maine’s watersheds.

Counting Alewives at the Milltown Dam fishway on the St. Croix river in New Brunswick, Canada, Photo courtesy of the Portland Press Herald

Fish ladders and elevators “aren’t working like they’re supposed to, and fish aren’t making it to where they need to go.” So began a recent article in Science magazine. In many cases this assertion is spot on – but in others, fish passages have been remarkably successful. Maine has examples of both.

To find a faulty fish passage,  one need look only at the dam on the Androscoggin River between the towns of Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. The fish ladder at that dam quite simply does not work and the number of fish that successfully navigate its labyrinth is paltry. If anadramous fish like salmon, shad or river herring are ever to return to the reaches of the Androscoggin, significant changes will need to be made to that fish ladder. Better yet would be, where possible, the removal of dams through collaborative efforts like those that led to the success of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust’s efforts or the removal of the dam in Winterport several years ago.

On the other hand, fish ladders remain an important management tool in areas where dam removal cannot be achieved. Indeed, there are a few fish ladders that have been very successful at passing fish, especially when they are allowed to work. For example, in Maine fish ladders at the first three dams on the St. Croix River worked remarkably well – in just 5 short years of operation in the 1980’s, the number of alewives successfully surmounting the 3 dams via fish ladders went from 20,000 to more than 2.5 million. And in 1995, when, for reasons that had nothing to do with science or logic, a state law was passed closing two of the fish ladders, the number of alewives plummeted to less than 1000. Today, even after one of the fishways was allowed to be opened in 2008, alewives are still barred from 98% of the waters that they use to spawn. That’s why CLF will continue to fight to repeal that law, either through the Courts or with our allies in the Legislature.

That said, the data provided in the Science article is depressing. At three major rivers on the East Coast that less than 150 years ago had been teeming with anadromous fish – the Merrimack, the Connecticut and the Susquehanna – virtually no fish –  706, 86, and 7 respectively – passed through the fish ladders at those dams. The author’s call to remove those dams would no doubt increase those numbers significantly and should be pursued to the extent feasible. Alternatively, the fish passage at those and other dams should be evaluated as to effectiveness and those that fail as miserably as those on the Merrimack, Connecticut and Susquehanna, as well as the Androscoggin, should be repaired, modified or replaced with fish passage that does work, like that on the St. Croix.

Tides in Maine vary enormously along the coast – tides along the sandy southern coast in York range between 5 to 7 feet while the tides in Eastport range from 18 – 21 feet. This week’s election results in Maine were more like the Eastport tides than the ones in York.

Maine is the first state to enact a same-sex marriage law by a vote of the general public. Mainers chose to replace Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican long known for her independent streak, with an actual independent, former Governor and now Senator-elect Angus King. And Mainers also voted to replace the Republican majorities in the State House of Representatives and the State Senate with a Democratic majority in both houses. All of this is good news for Maine and for Maine’s environment.

Senator-elect King is an eloquent and thoughtful leader when it comes to climate change, an issue that received embarrassingly little attention in the Presidential election until the nation witnessed the devastation and loss of Superstorm Sandy, just the latest in a series of increasingly severe weather events that have caused death and destruction along the Atlantic coast. Prior to running for Senate, King not only talked the talk but he walked the walk, developing wind power projects here in Maine. While CLF is likely to have its disagreements with Senator-elect King on certain matters, his election to the Senate will provide that body with a strong voice for acting on climate change in a way that is both good for our communities and good for our economy.

Closer to home, the loss of one party rule at the State House in Augusta marks the end of the hegemony of the LePage Administration over the past two years. With control of both the House and the Senate, the LePage administration was able to push through many changes to Maine’s regulatory structure to the detriment of the environment with little benefit to the economy. Whether that was in limiting access to the Board of Environmental Protection, making it easier for a Canadian company to conduct open pit mining or eviscerating the Land Use Regulatory Commission, the track record of the current administration has been deeply troubling and well worth the D grade it received from the Maine Conservation Voters recently.  Indeed, had it not been for a few courageous and principled members of his own party, the damage would have been even greater.

With both chambers of the legislature now controlled by what the Governor calls the “opposition,” the LePage tide is now receding and one hopes that means that instead of trying to recreate the false dichotomy of environment vs. economy, Augusta can focus on the real challenges and opportunities for Maine’s environment and its economy.

Photo courtesy of Lhoon @ flickr.com

The concept of a private East-West highway that would cut across Maine is a proposal that CLF has had significant reservations about, for various reasons, since its inception. Recent events and discussion have only heightened those reservations.

The East-West Highway has been an on-again, off-again proposal since at least 1937. The concept last came under serious scrutiny in 1998, resulting in a report that the costs of building an East West highway outweighed the benefits, and that report’s focus was largely on the economic costs and benefits and not the environmental or community costs. The most recent proposal has generated a storm of criticism. A recent panel discussion of transportation experts that included Peter Mills, former State Senator and the current head of the Maine Turnpike Authority and former rail executive Matt Jacobson laid out the various economic and environmental problems with the proposal. See a video of that presentation here.

During the last legislative session, we at CLF believed that the decision by the Legislature to fund a study of a proposed private East West Highway to the tune of $300,000 was a waste of scarce state resources, both in the $300,000 that was allocated for the study and in the amount of time that the Department of Transportation staff would have to spend on designing the scope of that study. The proposal has proved so unpopular that the sponsor of the legislation, State Senator Doug Thomas, recently asked the Governor to suspend the study until more trust could be established with local people as noted in these articles here and here. Rather than slow down the study, as the Governor has proposed or propose new legislation to prevent a private party from exercising the power of eminent domain as Senator Thomas has done (a thinly veiled effort by Senator Thomas to change the subject to one he is more comfortable with although just as much of a red herring), Maine would be better off in evaluating how to increase the amount of traffic on its rail system.

As others have noted, Maine has an East West Highway: our railroads.  Rather than throw good money and time after bad, we should be spending time and money on how we can create better incentives and improve efficiencies in order to increase the flow of goods that leave and enter Maine via rail. The recent news that the Maine Northern Railway has tripled its volume of traffic is indicative of the economic value that rail can bring to Maine, especially for its natural resource industries.

In addition, the environmental benefits of not only using an existing system and avoiding all of the impacts that constructing a major new highway would have but also the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by transferring the shipping of freight from highway to rail are enormous. So perhaps the best result of this timeout would be for the money originally allocated to yet another study of an East-West highway to be reallocated to a study of maximizing the use and benefits of Maine’s existing infrastructure that can move goods across Maine.