In his piece, “Save both Atlantic salmon and the Shawmut Dam” (June 27), state Sen. Mark R. Lawrence appears to rely on good faith and talking points from the dam’s owner, Brookfield Renewable Power of Toronto, Ontario. Sen. Lawrence, from York County, may not be as familiar with Central Maine’s Kennebec River resource as those of us who live and work along its banks and have witnessed the positive changes in the river below the Lockwood Dam in Waterville since the 1999 removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta.

Likewise, he may not know that with the 2008 removal of the Fort Halifax Dam in Winslow, the town of Benton acquired rights to the largest run of alewife on the East Coast. That commercial harvest pays the salary and benefits of two of its elementary school staff. The commercial harvest is also exported to Canada where it is processed and shipped to Haiti where the protein is desperately needed.

I want to respond to Sen. Lawrence with the flowing points:

1) The debate is not just about the Shawmut Dam; it is about the cumulative impact of four Brookfield dams that adult salmon must find their way around to get to their spawning habitat in the upper Sandy River and then back to sea, where they can replenish their sapped strength to return to spawn again the next year, as they grow larger and carrying more eggs to build the Kennebec’s Atlantic salmon population.

2) The issue is about the baby Atlantic salmon that grow to adolescence in the Sandy River for two years before following their parents downstream, past the turbines and 30-foot-high spillway drops onto concrete and rock aprons at four dams.

3) It is not about the loss of an estimated three fish annually if a 95% effective fish ladder is employed at Shawmut, compared to an impractical-to-build, 99%-effective fish ladder. It is about the cumulative loss of 5% of the spawning adult Atlantic salmon at each of the four dams.

With 95% efficiency, of 100 fish who attempt to pass the Lockwood Dam in Waterville, only 95 fish get to Hydro-Kennebec, 90 get to Shawmut, 86 get to Weston Dam in Skowhegan, and perhaps 81 find their way to the Sandy River. That’s a 19% loss in upstream adult fish passage, before you add the losses caused by 25 miles of warm impoundments, and the additional losses from downstream passage on out-migrating adult salmon and juvenile salmon.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which licenses and sets operating conditions at all four of the lower Kennebec dams between, has committed to assessing the combined environmental impact of all four dams on the river as a system in its licensing decisions about each of those dams. This final FERC Environmental Impact Statement will not be published before 2023.

4) To suggest that anyone concerned about restoring the population of Atlantic salmon would sacrifice 700 union jobs to save an estimated three fish at Shawmut is ludicrous. No one would advocate for such a tradeoff. Gov. Janet Mills has pledged that this will not happen, and advocates for dam removal have pledged to seek ways to keep the mill operating without additional cost to Sappi Corp.

5) The four dams combined generate merely 47 megawatts of non-fossil fuel energy. Over the past 18 months I have received solicitations from at least seven community solar farm developers who, when their projects are fully operational and connected to the Maine’s power grid, will more than replace the power generated by these four lower Kennebec River dams. These community solar farms will produce power with no impact on fish and wildlife or the scenic vistas of the North Woods.

Sen. Lawrence would do well to check his sources and learn more about our Kennebec River before offering up an uninformed opinion.

Dave Hedrick is retired and lives in Waterville, where he enjoys fishing the Kennebec River and is director of the Kennebec Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

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