John Charest, Augusta's public works director, watches in July 1999 from the Edwards Dam blockhouse as the Kennebec River flows through a breach in the dam.

Dirt and silt cloud the Kennebec River in July 1999 as the rushing water from the upper section of the river flows freely through the breach, at left, in the Edwards Dam in Augusta.

The former site of the Edwards Manufacturing and the Edwards Dam, photographed in 2002.

A high school biology student weighs an alewife June 5 along the banks of Cobbosseecontee Stream in Gardiner. Biology students from Gardiner Area High School were catching and measuring fish as a research project this spring.

The Kennebec River impoundment area behind Edwards Dam in Augusta is seen on June 18, 1999. A former paper mill is on the riverbanks at left, and the Edwards Dam can be seen as the white line in the river where water goes over it.

Workers clustered near a backhoe, at bottom, watch on July 1, 1999, as the rushing water of the Kennebec River breaches the coffer dam section of the Edwards Dam in Augusta, flowing freely for the first time in nearly a century and a half.