TOWNSHIP 1 RANGE 12, Maine — Construction is underway as crews build a dam to replace one that led to the d ewatering of a section of the Roach River last year .
According to Walter Graff, senior vice president of the Appalachian Mountain Club, which owns the land and the dam, despite early delays in the bidding process, the project is on schedule to wrap up this month.
“We have until Oct. 15 to complete the dam,” Graff said. “I talked to some of the people [on Monday], and they’re right on schedule.”
In May, the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Maine Land Use Planning Commission reached an administrative settlement agreement on the Roach River dam issue in the wake of last year’s incident.
After a dry summer of 2014, about 1 mile of the Roach River described as prime nursery habitat for landlocked salmon and brook trout was dewatered for 10 days while construction of a dam at Second Roach Pond was underway.
That dam, Graff said, was built too high to allow water to flow into the river, especially during times of extremely low water.
The Appalachian Mountain Club and Land Use Planning Commission entered into discussions about the issue, and in May an agreement was reached.
The agreement called for the Appalachian Mountain Club to hire an engineering firm not involved with the previous dam to plan and design a new dam. That new firm, Wright-Pierce, was approved by the Land Use Planning Commission, as was also required in the settlement.
According to the Land Use Planning Commission, the Appalachian Mountain Club has paid a $15,000 civil penalty, and will, according to the settlement agreement, “complete or substantially contribute” to a project that improves fish passage at a stream or river road crossing at a cost of $70,000 or more.
That work consists of culvert replacement on Blackstone Brook in Blackstone Township, opening up more than 9 miles of cold-water habitat that is used by brook trout and Atlantic salmon.
The Appalachian Mountain Club land is the site of Medawisla Wilderness Lodge, which is in the process of being rebuilt. Graff said the original dam was old and needed replacing.
“The dam that had been there was failing, and the pond level for a number of years had been dropping,” Graff said. “We were afraid that the dam would fail, so we went to [the Land Use Planning Commission] to see if we could fix the dam or reconstruct the dam, and in the end we decided to reconstruct it. That was to protect the pond for recreational value — people canoeing and swimming — but also to protect the wetlands the dam provided.”
The dam does not produce hydroelectricity and has no gates. It’s a rock ramp dam, according to Graff.
“It’s Mother Nature providing the amount of water that goes over the dam,” he said.
However, in order for Mother Nature to do her work, the dam has to be engineered to allow flow into the river during all weather conditions. After the 2014 construction project dewatered the Roach River, Graff said he and the Appalachian Mountain Club were eager to work with state agencies and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Interim measures were taken to ensure that water flowed into the river from Second Roach Pond before this summer’s construction of a re-engineered dam began in September.
Tim Obrey, the regional fisheries biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said addressing the issue promptly last fall was key, as fish in the river were ready to spawn.
“Last fall, [the Appalachian Mountain Club] installed several culverts at the base of the dam to provide the flow that we recommended to attract and hold adult salmon and trout in the river,” Obrey said in an email. “My assistant, Jeff Bagley, walked the section of river on Nov. 20 and counted 36 [spawning] redds. We were very pleased by the results of the survey.”
Graff said he’s confident the new dam will provide water flows that fish and wildlife depend on.
“The determination [of a hydrological study] was that [the dam that had been constructed in 2014] was too high, that even a 100-year flood would have had trouble topping the dam,” Graff said. “[At the new dam], the water will go over the dam, but at low water the fish will pass through the fish passage.”
Obrey said the Appalachian Mountain Club and Wright-Pierce engineers cooperated with biologists during the planning process and showed that they were concerned about the same things the DIF&W was: habitat.
And while he said the Appalachian Mountain Club wishes the dewatering had never happened, Graff is gratified that one of the requirements of the settlement agreement called for habitat work funded by his group. The Appalachian Mountain Club has long been involved in fish passage projects, he said.
“[The Blackstone Stream work] is a great project,” Graff said. “If we had to pay a fine for mitigation work, that was a good outcome.”
