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.

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.

The St. Croix River (Photo credit: NOAA Photo Library)

•  Tuesday, June 5 – “Taking Stock of New England Fish: Part 3” – TalkingFish.org interviews Mike Palmer, Research Fisheries Biologist in the Population Dynamics Branch of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. In this post, Mike Palmer explains how uncertainty comes into play in stock assessments and how it is accounted for.

• Thursday, June 7 – “CLF Lawsuit to Protect Alewives in Maine” – Last week, CLF filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an effort to overturn a Maine law that has prevented the alewife, a key forage fish, from accessing its native habitat in the St. Croix River in Maine.

• Friday, June 8 – “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, June 7” – Interesting stories this week: bad grades for ocean policy, mermaids, yeast research, and environmental and health risks of imported shrimp.

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!