Anyone who follows CLF’s work knows about plans being pushed to move oil derived from tar sands in Canada through pipelines that would cut across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.  The purpose of the these pipelines is simple and clear: to allow this oil to reach the sea and foreign markets that can only be reached by oil tanker.

It is easy to understand why the Canadian oil industry, and the multi-national petroleum companies with big Canadian investments, want to move the oil extracted from the Tar Sands of Western Canada out to the larger world markets: doing so will mean they make A LOT of money.  The Canadian petroleum industry has explained this for us all very helpfully in an ad found on page 2 of the June-July 2013 issue of the Canadian Public Policy and Politics magazine with the zippy name of “Policy” that we reprint here.

The ad confirms the purpose of the wave of pipeline building being pushed by the Canadian petroleum industry (and ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, the owners of leading Canadian companies like Imperial Oil/Esso and Flint Hills Resources): to raise the price of Canadian oil up to the levels found on many global markets.  As the ad shows, using little prices tags, the price of oil in the North American market hovers around $85 a barrel at times when the same barrel of oil sells for $110 elsewhere in the world. If the producers, refiners and sellers of that oil have access to world markets they can demand that North American customers pay them the higher price if they want to buy this oil.  This reality is especially stark when you look at the fact that oil refining companies with operations in the United States just don’t care if these pipelines get built – they are fully occupied with oil extracted right here at home.  It is just Canadian companies (and the multi-national companies like ExxonMobil and Koch who own Canadian operations) who profit from the push for these pipelines.

So we know who wins if new pipelines carry Canadian oil to reach global markets: the petroleum companies who reap the higher prices found beyond the United States and Canada. But who loses?

The answer to that requires us to think both about the short-term in which we all live our day-to-day lives and the longer-term world in which future generations will have to live.

When we think about immediate and short-term concerns for our families and businesses it doesn’t get any more real than gasoline prices.

Supporters of building pipelines to move Canadian oil to market generally and the highest profile project, the Keystone XL pipeline that would move oil through the middle of the United States from Canada to the Gulf Coast, invoke gas prices as a reason for taking that step, at least implying that the new pipelines will drive down gas prices.

However,  it is well documented in a number of reports and studies that Midwestern drivers would see gasoline prices rise on the order of 42 cents a gallon if that pipeline is built. And this is not surprising – if the oil used to make gasoline is being sold (and bought) at higher prices then gasoline prices will rise.

So in the short term – the losers in this equation? Anyone who buys gasoline or relies upon goods or services that rely on gasoline or diesel fuel that are transported by car, truck, ship or airplane – in short all of us.

And that doesn’t even get into the critical longer term issue: that tapping into the tar sands oil, bringing them to market and burning them would be a large step towards the devastating climate disaster that is unfolding around us and that we need to stop.

There are those who disagree with this assessment. Some politicians argue that tar sands oil from Canada is needed to free ourselves from dependence on oil imported from volatile (and often hostile) nations overseas.  They suggest that these pipelines will simply bring it that oil to markets we, here in the U.S., draw upon, oddly ignoring the stated purpose of the pipelines to bring the oil to higher-priced offshore markets.

And there are thoughtful and detailed analyses that disagree with the climate argument about this oil.  This analysis argues that if the tar sands oil is not brought to market that it will simply be replaced by slightly-easier-to-access Venezuelan oil with a very similar carbon footprint.

That climate impact analysis, and the political argument for building pipelines to tap into tar sands oil, however ignore one important, essential and difficult option: use less oil instead. The advent of electric vehicles, smarter urban development and increases in transit use all converge to show us a way forward and off of oil. The increase in fuel economy standards, a process that is well underway, is a step on that path.

Getting off oil will not be easy.  As the social critic, songwriter and bicycle enthusiast David Byrne has noted, “From the age of the Dinosaurs, cars have run on gasoline.”  Changing something so fundamental will be hard but it is what we need to do; that is what in all of our interests, not laying new pipelines to bring ancient oil derived from the cracking and boiling of tar sands to foreign markets where it will be burned and released into the atmosphere.

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

Do you recognize these fish?

They are anadromous alewives, also known as river herring. These small fish leave the ocean and swim upriver to spawn each May and June in Maine ponds and lakes. They provide food and cover for other migrating fish and are a critical part of the food chain in the ocean. Because so many Maine rivers are blocked by dams, the number of alewives has dipped dangerously low, so much so that the National Marine Fisheries Service is considering listing them under the Endangered Species Act. Through a series of legal actions, this trend is reversing.

For 150 years, alewives have been unable to swim upstream to spawn in the Presumpcot River. They have been blocked by a series of dams. The first dam in the series, the Cumberland Mills Dam, is at Sappi’s paper mill in Westbrook.

What’s changed at the Cumberland Mills Dam?

In 2009, in a  proceeding initiated and prosecuted by CLF and the Friends of the Presumpscot River, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife ordered Sappi to construct a fishway through the dam. After two years of construction, the nearly five million dollar fishway is completed and will enable fish to pass above the dam. It opened with fanfare on May 1, 2013 and awaits the spring migration of alewives and shad.

Sappi now has another two years to build a fishway at its next dam upstream, and then as the fish return to their native habitat must construct fish passage at four other dams beyond that. The timing will depend on how many fish migrate up the river. CLF’s Executive Vice President Sean Mahoney, with another attorney for the Friends of the Presumpscot River, spear-headed the petition that has led to the re-opening of the river to alewives and shad.

Sappi plans to create a webpage which will in part track the progress of alewives up the river.  We will share that resource when we have it. Keep checking back here, on CLF Scoop, for more!

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.

An important step forward for restoring alewives to the St. Croix river

Fishermen, environmentalists, anglers, representatives from the Passamaquoddy tribal government, federal agencies and the Canadian government have spoken: Alewives should be allowed to return to their native St. Croix river.

At a legislative hearing Monday, speaker after speaker rose in support of a bill, L.D. 72, that would immediately open many fishways at the river’s dams to Alewives.

Our own Sean Mahoney, EVP & Director, CLF ME, testified in support of the bill, arguing, “L.D. 72 is simple, it does the right thing and its benefits – to the watershed, the ecosystem and the many whose livelihoods would be enhanced by a return of the alewives – would be relatively immediate.”

The legislature is currently considering three bills, and Mahoney was joined by the vast majority in supporting L.D. 72, an emergency bill sponsored by Passamaquoddy tribal Rep. Madonnah Soctomah, that would require the Grand Falls Dam fishway to be opened to the “unconstrained passage” of Alewives by May 1^st, before the species’ spring spawning season.

The opening would give the fish immediate access to over 24,000 acres of habitat, compared to a sparse 1,174 open today. In all likelihood, this opening would lead to Canada’s opening the fishway upstream at the Vanceboro dam, allowing access to thousands of additional acres. One researcher estimated that if spawning runs had access to the entire watershed, alewives could number more than 20 million, up from just over 31,000 now.

The alternative Adaptive Management Plan, L.D. 584, calls for a more gradual, staged reintroduction of spawning Alewives to the river. Proposed by Governor Page’s administration, this plan met overwhelming opposition at Monday’s hearing, and was even condemned by one of its own co-authors. It falls far short of restoring alewives throughout the watershed.  It also would run afoul of federal law concerning the operating of dams such as the Vanceboro Dam, as well as the State’s own water quality standards, as noted by Sean in his testimony.

The LePage administration, along with fishing guides from Washington county, were alone in their concerns that reintroduction of Alewives may lead to a decline in smallmouth bass. The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asserted that smallmouth bass, which were introduced into the St. Croix in 1877, have lived harmoniously with spawning Alewives in hundreds of Maine’s lakes and rivers.  Mahoney’s testimony, which you can read here, provides the legal arguments against L.D. 584.

You can more about our work restoring the alewives to Maine’s rivers here, or check out our latest blog posts about alewives 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 Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) took important steps this week to increase energy efficiency in the state and pass those savings along to Maine’s electric customers. On Tuesday, the PUC issued its final order unanimously approving the Efficiency Maine Trust’s Triennial Plan, the comprehensive document that outlines the strategies, programs, budgets and estimated savings for three years starting July 1, 2013.

Some of the more critical components of the approved Plan are its budgets for the Trust’s largest programs related to electric efficiency. The Trust had proposed and made the case for expanding its budget for these programs by almost three times what would otherwise have been available to the Trust, estimating over $650 million in achievable cost-effective savings. The PUC  took a more conservative approach, but acted meaningfully, doubling the electricity budget and affording ratepayers close to $500 million in savings from these programs.

With their decision, Maine’s energy experts have spoken and they unanimously agree that the Legislature should significantly increase funding for energy efficiency. We hope the Legislature will take the responsible course of action this time and claim a victory for Maine ratepayers and the environment.

But, as I wrote last week, going forward, these efficiency funding decisions should reside with the experts at the PUC. The Maine law implemented last year shifting final say on certain energy efficiency funding from the PUC to the Legislature must be amended to direct that authority back to the PUC where it belongs. The Legislature will have the chance to make that change this session. The Legislature should look to the PUC’s actions this week as a demonstration of its keen understanding of the facts and the value of energy efficiency to the people and the state of Maine, and should follow the lead of our energy regulators.

The press release announcing the PUC’s decision is here.

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.