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discussed in prior posts, a Maine law prohibiting alewives from accessing this fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam was repealed this past May and for the first time in two decades, alewives are able to return to their spawning grounds upriver.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

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.

Photo by Robert F. Bukaty, courtesy of Portland Press Herald Archives

As mentioned in prior posts here and here, CLF’s lawsuit to reopen the St. Croix River to alewives resulted in this letter from EPA agreeing that the Maine Alewife Law violated water quality standards for the St. Croix.

Yesterday, the Maine Attorney General responded to that letter here and the response is disappointing to say the least.  The first half of the letter is not even related to the Alewife Law but rather a gratuitous attempt to bolster the State’s efforts to restrict the jurisdiction of the Passamaquoddy Tribe and other Maine tribes.  The second half of the letter does not contest the findings in EPA’s letter that the Alewife Law constitutes a change in the St Croix’s water quality standard but rather attempts to justify that change as a fishery management exercise unrelated to the Clean Water Act.

As I noted in a interview yesterday on MPBN, you can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.  Nor is the State’s “commitment” to the so-called adaptive management plan for the St Croix currently under consideration by the International Joint Commission of any real value.  As noted in this article by Colin Woodard, the adaptive management plan may be better than nothing but just barely.

What this means for the St Croix is really nothing more than status quo – passage at the Grand Falls dam will remain closed to alewives as long as the State is willing to let bad science and a small minority of self-interested fishing guides call the shots.  This is even more unpalatable given the current crisis that our lobster fishery is in. A resurgent alewife population (close to 3 million before the State closed fish passage) could only help that industry that can use alewives as bait fish. A robust alewife population would also help the Maine groundfish and whale watching industries, for whom alewives are a key source of food.  For these reasons, as well as the health of the St Croix ecosystem as a whole, CLF remains committed to restoring alewives to their native habitat in the St. Croix.  Stay tuned for next steps.

Image courtesy of USDA @ flickr.

Last week, CLF filed a lawsuit against the EPA and Curtis Spalding, EPA Regional Administrator, Region 1. (You can find a copy of the suit here, and copy of the press release here.) I want to take a moment to explain why this lawsuit is important.

The alewife is a critical “keystone” species in marine and fresh waters – it is an important source of food for many fish and marine mammals and for numerous birds.  The alewife is a native fish to many Maine rivers and is anadromous, meaning it starts its life in freshwater ponds and lakes, migrates down river to the ocean where it spends most of its life and then returns to its native waters to spawn.

As on many Maine rivers, alewives on the St. Croix River were all but extirpated due to pollution and the damming of the river. However, in the early 1980’s, the population of alewives in the St. Croix River was restored, reaching more than 2.5 million a year due to cleaner water and effective fish passage at the dams on the river.  But in 1995 the Maine legislature passed a bill specifically designed to block alewife passage at the Woodland Dam and Grand Falls Dam on the St. Croix River, based on what turned out to be unsubstantiated claims that alewives were causing a decline in the non-native smallmouth bass population in the St. Croix watershed. In 2008, even after those claims were found to be without merit, the Maine legislature amended the law to allow alewives passage only at Woodland Dam, restoring only 2% of the natural habitat previously available to alewives – effectively preventing them from accessing 98% of their natural habitat in the St Croix above the Grand Falls Dam.

As a result of this change, as I said in my letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, “the Maine Legislature intentionally and effectively changed the water quality standards for that section of the St. Croix [from Class A] to Class B.” As we allege in our suit, this action obligated the EPA to review and reject that change pursuant to its non-discretionary duties under the Clean Water Act (or CWA).

Under the Clean Water Act, any change to an existing water quality standard must be consistent with the state’s anti-degradation policy and must be submitted to the EPA for review. The de facto change to the water quality standards of the St. Croix was not submitted to the EPA for review, nor did EPA review the change for approval or disapproval, as required.

As a result, Maine was allowed to circumvent its responsibilities, and the EPA failed to fulfill its legal obligations.

As I said in the press release, “The law is fundamentally at odds with the legal requirement that the St. Croix River provide natural habitat unaffected by human activity for these fish and EPA has a continuing obligation to review and reject this change in that requirement.”

I was joined in my statement by Bill Townsend, a longstanding member of CLF and one of the deans of Maine’s environmental community, who noted that when he served as President of Maine Rivers, it obtained the funding and data to support studies that alewives are not detrimental to small-mouth bass populations, the original basis for the law. “The failure of the Maine Legislature to change the law in the face of that evidence and of the EPA to take every possible step to address that wrong is unacceptable.”

For more, find copies of my letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson here, CLF’s filing here, and our press release here.

Stay tuned for more!