AUGUSTA, Maine — Passionate and long-standing disagreement over allowing alewives through the Grand Falls Dam in Washington County continued Monday during debate on a bill that would reverse legislation from two years ago that let the migratory sea-run fish into the St. Croix River watershed.
On one side of the debate are fishing guides, environmentalists and others who insist that the annual spawning run of alewives through the St. Croix River watershed is spreading disease and causing malnourishment for the watershed’s stock of salmon and bass.
On the other side are scientists and state agencies who say alewives are not harmful to other fish and their spawning runs up the St. Croix River are crucial for the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. Alewives also are a valued bait used by Maine lobstermen.
In the middle are Maine’s Native American tribes — most notably the Passamaquoddy Tribe — which see the alewife as a sacred fish that their culture and civilization is built upon.
“If not for that fish, I wouldn’t be here today,” said Vera Francis, a vice chief of the Passamaquoddy tribe at Pleasant Point. “This fish is sacred. This fish is very important to our culture and to us as people.”
Under debate Monday was LD 800, sponsored by Rep. Beth Turner, R-Burlington, which revives a debate that’s been going on for decades. More than 50 people testified during Monday’s hearing, which lasted for most of the day.
The issue came to a head in the 1980s when some claimed that the presence of alewives in the watershed harmed sport fishing in Spednic Lake and others, according to a previous report in the Bangor Daily News. Legislation was enacted that blocked fishways at Grand Falls and Woodland Dams, though the latter barrier was removed in 2008. The blockage at Grand Falls Dam was removed in 2013 after the enactment of Soctomah’s bill.
Gov. Paul LePage let that bill go into effect without his signature, but his administration is now fully against reblocking the fishway. Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher acknowledged from the start of his testimony Monday that there was unlikely to be a compromise through the legislative process. He called for an impartial third-party scientific review of the issue, the results of which others suggested should be binding in law.
“What you’re going to hear today is an argument and a disagreement on the science,” said Keliher. “This is a very difficult place to have an argument about the science.”
Keliher argued that there are freshwater lakes up and down the Maine coast, including in Damariscotta and Woolwich, where alewives and freshwater fish thrive together. He did concede that there are places, including possibly East Grand Lake, where landlocked alewives — which live in the lake year-round and do not pass to or from the ocean — do cause problems for some other species.
But fishing guides, such as John Arcaro, who owns a sporting lodge on Grand Lake Stream, say they know what they’re seeing year in and year out.
“You are creating a biological invasion that you have no control of,” he said to lawmakers on Monday. “I know the lobstermen need bait. I say to the lobstermen, you can move your boat. I have made a huge investment in that lodge. It’s there, and I can’t move it.”
The Marine Resources Committee will hold a work session in the coming days to vote whether to recommend Turner’s bill to the full Legislature. The committee also could amend the bill before sending it to the Legislature and, if it passes there, to LePage.
