ORRINGTON, Maine — Water from a beaver dam that burst Friday night — in the same place a break occurred in 2001 — has temporarily wiped out Swetts Pond Road and a portion of the nearby railroad tracks.
Road and Pan Am rail crews could be seen Saturday scrambling to fix the flood damage.
“The beaver flowage that broke 10 years ago and did all that damage — that same beaver flow breached again,” Assistant Fire Chief Scott Stewart said Saturday. “It’s sticks and mud — it’s a beaver dam — and sticks and mud break.”
There was a breach at the beaver dam in October, he said, adding that when officials checked on that damage, “there were signs there may be weak spots in there,” the fire official said.
The flooding was reported at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday on Swetts Pond Road and by 7 p.m. had reached nearby Route 15. The receding water revealed a lot of damage on Saturday morning, Town Manager Paul White said.
“It looks like we’ve got a lot of repair work to do,” he said. “It looks very similar to what it looked like in 2001,” which caused $225,000 in damage.
The flooding Friday night was in the same area that washed out on May 23, 2001, when a beaver dam failure washed out a half-mile stretch of Swetts Pond Road and created a gully at least 10 feet deep at the entrance of Cemetery Road.
A device called a “beaver deceiver,” which resembles a culvert, was installed after the last major flooding a decade ago, but has since failed, White said.
“It’s a culvert that we placed in the dam to control the level of the dam,” the town manager said.
The device now “is completely visible and it’s completely jammed full of sticks,” which caused it to stop regulating the water levels, Stewart said.
The beavers, who live on private property, have been an ongoing issue in town for more than a decade.
“When the beavers built the dam they created an environment for other wildlife to use” that falls under state and federal protections, Stewart said.
The beavers cannot simply be moved, because there are rules to follow to protect the ecosystem they created.
“It’s not as easy as it might seem,” the assistant fire chief said, adding later that, “The state biologists have been involved … trying to come up with a solution so what happened [on Friday] didn’t happen.”
With the extensive washout damage, Swetts Pond Road will be shut down over the weekend, White said.
High volumes of water went over and under the Swetts Pond Road for more than four hours, creating a hidden danger, Fire Chief Mike Spencer said.
“The tar is still there, but there is nothing underneath” in many places, he said.
The flooding also took out several driveways and entered the home of one woman, who was evacuated and spent the night at a local motel, Stewart said.
Pan Am rail workers filled the washed out rail line with new gravel on Saturday while a train, destined for Bucksport, sat on the train tracks waiting for the work to be completed.
Public works crews from town and a local contractor worked Saturday to get the roadway back into drivable condition, White said.
“Our main goal at this point is to get those people access to their homes,” he said. “We’ve just got to rebuild and that is going to take some time.”
There must be information that I’m missing, but I would think an easy solution would be to get a trapper or two in there during the winter and hit it hard and remove as many as they can out of there, then just take a walk down there periodically to assess the situation. Because unless it’s in an area that prohibits trapping or they aren’t allowed in there for whatever reason, the beaver can be legally trapped in season.
“When the beavers built the dam they created an environment for other
wildlife to use” that falls under state and federal protections,
Stewart said.
The beavers cannot simply be moved, because there are rules to follow to protect the ecosystem they created.
“It’s not as easy as it might seem,” the assistant fire chief said
It doesn’t explain what those protections are though, if the only protection is that it is on federal land, on some of those lands you can trap. All animals that can be legally taken have protections, seasons, bag limits, etc…, is there something that says you can’t legally harvest those particular animals? Can anyone enlighten us.
Well it also said it’s on private property. I think that, essentially, if they take away the beavers, they would effectively get rid of the swamp that is behind the dam. (I wonder why they can’t just built a dam, and even leave the beavers alone. Or if there is a way to make a ‘backup’ dam for when the beaver dam gives way again)
Could they build some sort of run off type system where the path of the water goes when it breaks that would reenforce the road and gullies and prevent the devastation from being so great? Maybe they could talk to someone who builds the giant gullies/run offs like they have in AZ and NM.
A 25 cent bullet is the most economical solution.
Yeah, that is always true whenever you don’t mind shooting some perfectly good beaver.
I know the beaver are the better engineers, but that is not reason enough to just kill them.
But it is too bad they can only use mud and sticks, and don’t sub-contract.
Paying them in birch bark is a corporate wet dream.
But about this dam issue , now that we know where it breaks every so often,
why not put a culvert in the breach with an elbow at what we know , NOW,
after years of experience, is at right about at the right water level so the roads
don’t wash out in the high water ?
Engineers, stand and report; is that possible ?!!!
——————————————————————————————
While awaiting their report on that, the dear recently departed Ms. Kellogg might have had the power of persuasion to to turn this into an attraction, the Eddington Beaver Park
and Inter-species Eco-engineering Co-operative, …but doing that, given my bad ways,
is far beyond me.
But all that I DO KNOW is that if we can’t figure out how to live in harmony with the beavers in Maine how can we expect to solve any of the critical human issues that we face ?
We could still make lemonade out this messy soup.
And now is time, when even the railroad has a stake in making this dam mess work for everyone, beavers included, and given they just pass by Eddington usually, we have to strike when their iron is ….well, underwater .
BTW, OOS, this is more in reply to Kired, but I wanted it below your facts, too,
for what I hope by now are clearly good reasons.
The point of those rules that OOS mentioned come from a time, long so ago,
in my youth, when it was not all about taxes, but when our quality of life in Maine
still mattered, too. Back when learning to not destroy nature still had some valued, too.
In point of fact, THAT was our Maine values back then.
THEY come from a time when we were crazy enough to outlaw billboards and put a dfive cent deposit on bottles so just driving on relatively clean roads with a view, of God’s nature, alone, was nicer then where our tourist guests came from .
That it saved the DOT money, too, was secondary to it being an attraction to the tourists, so really, as I recall it was about actually being ready for new business by being different and better.
Maine Bottle Bill was totally a TEA solution.
Think about it, without the outta State right/left wing filters clouding your mind.
In fact we dreamers cleaned up that all that dirty water
… now mind, I loved that dirty, too, as it was tall the nature we had left in the whole Penobscot Valley, back then .. but our old dreams are real, now,
salmon are in the Salmon Pond again, praise whom, and people gather on banks of the
once stinky, filthy Penobscot River and rock out to national rock bands.
Would that have happened without the environments first and foremost and the Folk Festival socialists ?
Just imagine the private sector turning the Pensobsot River as I saw it in the 1960’s into where anyone ever would go.
I can’t.
Can you image that ?
No, of course not because good government is a good thing .
It make it possible to do the right things just because they are the right things to do.
So I’m all in favor of getting back to real traditional Maine values.
But let’s define them define them , real carefully, please.
Is that really trapping and killing ALL the beavers ?
Or are they about learning how to live with and preserving them,
then showing them flatlanders how they could do so , too, as we are charging them just enough admission to a real live beaver pond that our area school children can all to it for free, and so like real Maine values… for free, once come September, at least, anyway.
Decide that for yourself.
I’m not selling something, because there nothing it for me, personally.
But once you decide, the currency that matters, Mainers, is your vote, speaking plainly.
So philosophies aside; might we make this beaver pond an attraction in the increasingly
urban Greater Bangor area and a State resource as a model of beaver management ?
That ain’t going to happen in Grater Portland or anywhere in Massachusetts , is it ?
So being a proper puckerbush Yankee, I must say, now is the time,
because we might even get the railroad to help pay for it.
The beavers can’t speak to their own best interests, but given they they coincide with ours
just may-be the beaver’s good Yankee neighbors should help them out RIGHT NOW !!!
How about a beans and franks dinner or a hunter’s pancake breakfast,
if you think money ,.. or YOUR taxes … are the only big problem in helping all of your
neighbors to existence, too ?
A 25 cent bullet is the most economical solution.
Again, sure that’s always fine with any beaver you don’t like so you want
to kill, but what is your problem with beaver, BangLorian * ?
* Has anyone else noticed the trend toward copying, sort of, liberal commenter’s nicks, here ?
What a cheap disparate game they have been reduced to playing .
God love ’em, anyway.
BUT WHY DO THE CONS HATE BEAVER SO MUCH ?
Scott are you working for EPA or DEP or the state in anyway. You seem to be a walking law book.
He is correct. The Beavers created an eco system and wetland which are protected and it is on private land as well.
Am I Scott? What I said was just pulled straight from the article itself. I don’t work for Maine. (And I’m not a he)
With the dam broken the ecosystem they created has now changed again. Time to trap the beavers the season is open in Orrington until March 31. A few days left.
Or how about this? We save the beavers and go in there and build a better dam for them that won’t break. Then the precious new ecosystem can thrive.
“When the beavers built the dam they created an environment for other wildlife to use” that falls under state and federal protections, Stewart said.
The beavers cannot simply be moved, because there are rules to follow to protect the ecosystem they created.”
The ecosystem that they created must look a lot different now that the dam broke. Looks like a good time to get rid of the beavers that built a faulty dam that could potentially harm the ecosystem that they created.
” Looks like a good time to get rid of the beavers that built a faulty dam that could potentially harm the ecosystem that they created.”
Kill them all before the sperad, because they are politically incorrect to you ?
Am I missing anything ?
I do understand that it is best conservative plan , kill them all that stand in the way of your personal tax cuts, thank you. We have heard your message.
Your point is well noted, but shouldn’t we have killed off the upstream paper plants for
the same reasons, when we had the chance, then ?
Many here in Maine are not so much conservative, as conservationists, like those who turned the Penobscot River from open sewer and a for free paper plant waste disposal system into something to be proud of.
Now, fight with the Bangor waterfront concert people, please, because killing the beaver is going back to the old open sewage ways.
Who say you should be able to connect the dots ?
But you can just figure out why for yourself, dtmg.
I can’t explain it to those who will not compromise, so don’t bother trying any more, thank you very much.
To the rest of you, it is still best that you figure it out for yourselves, in my humble opinion.
Especailly you young people,.
Us old hippies have already whipped the the pollution mongers’ but(ts) and moved on.
Our kids, dtmg, have started businesses like rock concerts on River banks that require a different environmental approach.
Conservationism is just good economics.
All thing being equal, which is better for Eddington, managing the reality and making it an attraction or wasting perfectly good beaver ?
But all thing are not exactly equal in your “me first” terms, sir. .
The beaver , according to federal law, have almost as much right to exist as you, and rightly so.
Deal with it.
The truth that we all can see is that benefits of tending to a clean environment has economic advantages better than just hanging out signs that say we open for business.
Cope with it, boss.
Dude, lay off the Oxy.
I’ll bet them tourist line up by the hundreds to tour that swamp, er,,, eco-system.
You being a tree hugger, you do know that beavers take down trees?
The prices for beaver pelts has been very low for the last few years, simply not worth the trouble of processing the pelts. Most of us who water trap have switched over to muskrat, mink, and otter.
Keep the beavers there they have been there over 30 yrs and they need a place to live. They built there house before Bobby built his. There is plenty of Federal money around to fix it. If you want to builted a house across a brook with beaver dam above you them deal with it. Who will he blame know.
There is zero federal money this time. The feds said in 2001 that they would pay once for repairs.
alot of people i know own land that thanks to the beavers is now worthless and nothing can be done with it , but on a lighter note when theres beaver flowages theres big brook trout just waitig for me glad no one was injured this time
but did the beavers get a permit to build the damn dam…? and if they didn’t , shouldn’t the state or the feds take this issue to some kind of enviro beaver court ? someone has to pay.. and it has to be the guilty party who pays… so ……………………………………………………………
And , yet , on Rte#15 (right at the bottom of the hill heading toward Bucksport) the beaver dam miraculously disappeared two or three years back??!!
The Towns’ Selectmen have had this dam and the “Beaver Deceiver” in their meeting notes for months , now and the only thing they could decide on was to reword a part of one discussion??
It seems sometimes that the Town wants to protect certain areas , but – turn a blind eye when ones’ neighbor hauls in construction debris to fill in beside his/my property giving me a WONDERFUL view of the Corian countertops he hauled in there (can’t be real granite ’cause who would just give away large pieces to use as fill?? ) !!!Now , instead of the trees he cut … I see Pallets,Corian pieces,tires,sheetrock and whatever else he could haul in his trailer! He even dumped MORE after I called and D.H. came out to talk to him. C’mon does this mean OI can do the same? Oh, yeah…I don’t have that much money and friends who know friends!
Have you spoken with the Town Manager or gone before the Board of Selectmen? D.H. doesn’t work in a vacuum, he reports to someone.
Reading the story, I am led to believe the problem is not the beaver as much as those responsible for building the “beaver deceiver” and then not maintaining it. After the water receded the culvert was full of sticks that should have been cleared away before the breach. Follow the beavers example, persistence and vigilance, build it and maintain it, don’t walk away and forget it.
Beavers are a nuisance? Who knew?