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discussed in prior posts, a Maine law prohibiting alewives from accessing this fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam was repealed this past May and for the first time in two decades, alewives are able to return to their spawning grounds upriver.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

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.

Pressure is building to reopen the St. Croix River to the alewife, a critical forage fish.

Earlier this week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a letter adopting the recommendations made in our lawsuit seeking  to restore alewives, a key forage and bait fish, to the St. Croix River.

As noted last month, CLF initiated a lawsuit against the EPA due to its failure to review and reject the Maine law that requires an existing fish passage facility at the Grand Falls dam to be closed. You can find the blog post here, explaining why we sued EPA.

As I said in the press statement, “EPA’s letter is a gratifying sign that we’re finally making substantive progress in restoring this important fish to the St. Croix River watershed. As EPA now agrees, this law is scientifically and legally unsupportable. We hope that further litigation is unnecessary to ensure that the state follows the directive of EPA in allowing alewives to return to their native waters.”

Since CLF filed its complaint, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, joined by other Maine Tribes, has formally requested Maine’s Governor Le Page to repeal the state law and, in the alternative, asked the International Joint Commission to invalidate the law. See a copy of the letter here. CLF is working with the Tribes to achieve the goal of restoring alewives to their native waters in the St. Croix watershed

This story was the subject of a front page article by Colin Woodard in the Maine Sunday Telegram. You can find that article here.