|
Androscoggin River Data Length: 164 miles |
 A Brief History ~By Doug WattsThe Androscoggin, Maine’s third largest river, follows a long, convoluted route from its headwaters in extreme northwestern Maine to the midcoast towns of Brunswick and Topsham, passing through the White Mountains of New Hampshire for part of the way. A 17th century deposition by a local Indian, Perepole, serves as a fitting introduction: “I Perepole, of lawful age testify and say that the Indian name of the river was Pejepscook from Quabacook, what is now called Merrymeeting Bay, up as far as Amitgonpontook, what the English call Harrises falls, and all the river from Harrises falls up was called Ammoscongon and the largest falls on the river was above Rockamecook about twelve miles, and those falls have got three pitches, and there is no other falls on the river like them and the Indians used to catch the most Salmon at the foot of them falls, and the Indians used to say when they went down the river from Rockamecook and when they got down over the falls by Harrises they say now come Pejepscook.” Here we learn the Indian name of Merrymeeting Bay (Quabacook), the falls at Lewiston (Amitgonpontook); the Indian corn planting grounds at Canton and Jay Points (Rockamecook); and that Atlantic salmon ascended the river in great numbers as far as Rumford Falls.
In Rumford, the The Androscoggin drops more than 1,500 vertical feet in its journey from the Rangeley Lakes to Merrymeeting Bay and was originally a fast-flowing river with numerous large falls and long rapids. Despite its steep gradient, the Androscoggin has a well developed floodplain along much of its length in Maine that is farmed for corn, potatoes, hay and other crops. Today, the river’s broad floodplain at Canton Point is planted each spring with corn as it was by the Indians for thousands of years. Early English settlers quickly noticed the Androscoggin’s extraordinary abundance of fish. In 1673, a commercial fishing operation at Pejepscot Falls in Brunswick took 40 barrels of salmon and more than 90 kegs of sturgeon in three weeks’ time. It was reported that if more salt were available to preserve the fish for export, the take would have been much greater. By the mid-1700s, most of the native people of the Androscoggin, the Arasagunticook, were killed or driven out of the river valley and into Canada. In 1748, a military party searching reported “a grate number” of salmon at the falls at Lewiston, but no Arasagunticook. After the French and Indian War, numerous settlers moved from southern New England to the Androscoggin. In 1788, citizens of Brunswick petitioned the Massachusetts government to preserve the river’s fisheries. Their petition said: “many people [are] seining and joining driving nets together and making weirs or machines and dipping out of season for salmon which in our opinion is destructive and if not speedily stopped will end in final ruin of the fish in Merry Meeting Bay and the river running into the same.” By the early 1800s, mill dams illegally constructed without fish passage in Brunswick, Topsham and Lisbon Falls had destroyed the Androscoggin River’s enormous fish runs. In 1816 the last Atlantic salmon was seen at Great Falls in Lewiston. In 1835, settlers along the river pleaded with the Maine Legislature to restore the fish runs, stating in a petition: “The time was when salmon and other fish ascended the Androscoggin River and its tributary streams; but since the erection of numerous dams across said river at Topsham, Lisbon and other places, without such regulations as to permit suitable passage way for fish, the Inhabitants of the Country bordering on said River have been wholly deprived of this luxury, as well as necessary, with which nature had before bountifully supplied them. Your Memorialists beg leave to suggest that they humbly believe things ought not so to be.” Records at the Maine State Archives indicate the Maine Legislature ignored this petition and refused to enforce existing laws requiring fish passage at the Androscoggin’s dams. After the Civil War, numerous textile and lumber mills were constructed along the river, particularly in the reach from Lewiston to Brunswick. In the late 1870s, baby Atlantic salmon from the Penobscot River were placed in the Swift River in Mexico and fishways were built at Brunswick and Topsham. An 1882 letter by Mr. P. Hall of Topsham attested to the success of this effort, writing: “[I] will give you the particulars in regard to the salmon seen at the foot of the rips on the Androscoggin river, on the Topsham side, near Jack’s crossing, so called, by Mr. Johnson Clark of Topsham. Time, about the 20th of last month. He informs me that he was fishing with rod and line, when this large salmon, over three feet long, came to the surface and he had a good view him; could easily have shot him, as his loaded gun was lying by his side. He also informs me that he has heard of salmon being seen at the foot of Lisbon Falls this season.” Increasing pollution and the refusal of upriver dam owners to build fishways quickly doomed the only effort to restore the Atlantic salmon of the Androscoggin River. In the early 20th century, large pulp and paper mills were constructed along the river in New Hampshire, Rumford and Jay. These mills discharged an extraordinary amount of toxic pollution into the river, as did municipalities and textile mills, in Lewiston, Lisbon and on the Little Androscoggin River. In the 1930s, Central Maine Power completed several large hydro-electric dams that impounded most of the river from Lewiston to Livermore Falls. These and many other dams exacerbated the effects of pollution by drowning the river’s rapids that had naturally provided oxygen to the water. By the 1960s, the Androscoggin River had become one of the most severely polluted rivers in the United States. Dissolved oxygen levels from Berlin, New Hampshire to Brunswick frequently reached zero during the summer, resulting in the death of nearly all fish and other aquatic life in the river. In the 1970s, passage of the Clean Water Act by the United States Congress provided funding and legal mandates for sewage treatment plants along the river. Since the early 1980s, the river’s water quality has markedly improved above Rumford and Jay and has moderately improved from Jay to Brunswick. In the late 1980s, high levels of the extremely toxic chemical dioxin were discovered in the Androscoggin River and its fish below the paper mills in Berlin, New Hampshire, Rumford and Jay. Dioxin and its related chemicals are a byproduct of the use of chlorine compounds to Today, the Androscoggin River is clean enough to support a number of fish and wildlife species. However, the river’s water quality, odor and clarity becomes noticeably poorer in the reaches below Jay and Lewiston-Auburn. The middle and lower Androscoggin’s water quality and aesthetics remain significantly impaired compared with other large Maine rivers such as the Penobscot, Kennebec and Saco. The once enormous fish runs of the Androscoggin have disappeared from memory. Atlantic salmon have not been seen at Rumford Falls since the Indian Perepole described them in the late 1600s. A fishway constructed in 1980 at the river’s first dam at Brunswick is incapable of passing American shad. Native alewives must be trucked each spring to their native spawning ponds in the Sabbattus and Little Androscoggin River drainages because numerous dams without fishways block their path. There are no plans to build fishways at these dams. Each year, from two to 100 Atlantic salmon ascend the Brunswick dam fishway. The origin and fate of these salmon is unknown, since the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission does not consider the Androscoggin River suitable for Atlantic salmon restoration. The last known Atlantic salmon to ascend the Androscoggin River to Great Falls in Lewiston was observed in 1816. There are no plans to restore Atlantic salmon to their native home in the Androscoggin River. Local Organizations Androscoggin River Watershed Council Androscoggin Land Trust Friends of Merrymeeting Bay Mahoosuc Land Trust and Friends of the Androscoggin Stanton Bird Club |
Search Results for: Androscoggin watershed history
Maine Rivers Staff, Maine Rivers Board of Directors
Landis Hudson, Executive Director
Landis has a graduate degree in forestry resources management from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College. She has worked for Maine Audubon, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Earthwatch Institute. She lives near the Royal River in Yarmouth with her twin daughters.
Matt Streeter, Alewife Restoration Initiative Project Manager
An avid fly fisherman and restoration enthusiast, Matt has completed successful river restoration work for Trout Unlimited, including the Swett Brook Dam removal project in the Crooked River watershed near Sebago Lake. The project restored access to three miles of prime spawning habitat for native landlocked salmon migrating out of Sebago Lake, and for native brook trout in the watershed.
Maine Rivers Board of Directors
Nick Bennett
Nick is the Staff Scientist and Watersheds Project Director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Forestry. His professional background includes work in PCB contamination; wetlands delineations; wildlife surveys; and analysis of fish, soils, surface and ground water. Prior to working at NRCM, Nick worked at an environmental consulting firm, the Center for Marine Conservation, and the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole. Nick resides in Hallowell and is an avid duck hunter.
Curtis Bohlen, Maine Rivers Treasurer
Curtis Bohlen is an ecologist with a lifelong interest in all things aquatic and semi-aquatic. He is the Executive Director of the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership at the University of Southern Maine. Curtis has worked as a restoration ecologist with Trout Unlimited in Augusta, his past peripatetic, interdisciplinary academic life included a stint as a Congressional Science Fellow on Capitol Hill, a period working on ecological economics at the University of Maryland, and eight years at the Environmental Studies Department of Bates College In his spare time he reads to his kids and rows on the Royal River.
Dave Courtemanch
Dave Courtemanch spent much of his career with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection as the Director of the Division of Environmental Assessment, responsible for monitoring and assessment of the state’s lakes, rivers, wetlands, marine, and groundwater. He developed many of the state’s water quality standards. A focus of his work has been biologically-based water quality standards and biomonitoring methods for assessment of water quality. He was also involved in the defeat of Dickey-Lincoln and Big A dam proposals; Edwards Dam and other dam removal projects; analysis and licensing of major dischargers; the initial detection and removal of dioxin; analysis of mercury contamination; treatment of color, odor and foam in Maine’s rivers; development of statewide environmental flow criteria; and most recently the Penobscot River restoration project. He now works with The Nature Conservancy in Maine.
Greg D’Augustine
A long-time resident of Greene who established a private practice in Surgery in Lewiston, Greg brings a deep connection to the Androscoggin to the Maine Rivers Board. “My early experiences with the Androscoggin were characterized by joy as well as sorrow. The former, through white water paddling near the headwaters at Errol, New Hampshire; The latter, through paddling near my new home on Gulf Island Pond in Greene. There, I found all manner of trash discarded into the river ranging from old tires to rusting barrels. Even worse was the penetrating aroma which emanated from the river each summer, the result, I learned, of a history of perversion of the river’s personality from scenic waterway to industrial waste system. Thankfully, through the efforts of Ed Muskie and a host of subsequent activists, legislative and grass roots work has gradually prevailed. I played my small part by serving in the Androscoggin River Alliance, a group of citizens dedicated to improving water quality in the Androscoggin. While not uniformly successful in our efforts it’s certainly been gratifying to see generous sections of the river attain an attractive appearance, and to see a return of aquatic and flying wildlife there. How poignant and entrancing it has become to anticipate the return of the haunting call of the loons each Spring!”
Susan Davies
Susan Davies is an aquatic biologist with an MS in aquatic entomology from the University of Maine. She led the Biological Monitoring Section, and then was Water Quality Standards Coordinator at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for most of her environmental career. She has also worked extensively with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the European Commission, to provide technical expertise in use of aquatic organisms as water quality indicators. Susan’s work experience include lots of field biology, “bug-counting”, and data analysis with lots of great people, and she now especially enjoys musical connections playing rhythm and percussion for a big group of great fiddlers in and around Belfast.
Dan Gayer
Dan Gayer is an avid angler who lives in Cape Elizabeth with his family. When not he’s not fly fishing, Dan is a tax accountant with Baker Newman Noyes. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard University and he earned a juris doctor cum laude from the University of Maine School of Law.
Daniel Kusnierz, Water Resources Program Manager for the Penobscot Nation, has served the Nation since 1993, overseeing the protection of Penobscot territory waters and tribal uses of those waters. He has developed a watershed-wide water quality monitoring program with more than 95 weekly-sampling locations, set up a laboratory, and conducted investigations of toxic contaminants (including dioxins, furans, PCBs and mercury) and their impact on the aquatic environment. His expertise also includes investigations of algal blooms and nutrients, dam removal, biomonitoring using aquatic insects, and assessing and controlling non-point source pollution. Daniel uses the water quality data for permitting, licensing, and affecting policy change. He participates in numerous state, regional, and national working groups to ensure the tribal perspective is represented.
Rick Lawrence
Rick Lawrence owns and manages a tree farm along a mile of the Fifteenmile Stream, a major tributary of the Sebasticook River. He uses the river in all seasons, for swimming, skating, skiing and paddling. Rick retired from teaching after 33 years. He has strong interests in conserving rural ways in Central Maine, including forestry, agriculture and recreation.
Jeff Reardon, Secretary
Jeff Reardon is the New England Conservation Director for Trout Unlimited, currently overseeing the permitting and design of the Penobscot River Restoration Project. He is a graduate of Williams College who has been working on river conservation in Maine since moving home to Maine in 1994. Since 1999, he’s been working full time for TU.
We fondly remember Clinton “Bill” Townsend, 1927-2016 Former Maine Rivers President and founding board member
Bill’s passion for the environment was rooted in his deep love of fishing and Maine rivers. He was been awarded the River Network’s “River Hero Award,” Gulf of Maine Council on the Environment Visionary Award and Down East Magazine’s Environmental Award. Bill served on the boards of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, and Somerset Woods Trustees, Maine’s oldest land trust. He has served on the Boards of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and the Maine League of Conservation Voters. He served previously as United States Commissioner to the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization, and on the Land for Maine’s Future Board and the Land Use Regulation Commission. Bill practiced law with the firm of Perkins, Townsend, Shay and Talbot in Skowhegan.
Sharri Venno
Sharri Venno spends most of her water time on Penobscot Bay but has spent the last fifteen years of her life thinking about the health of the Meduxnekeag River in Aroostook County as an Environmental Planner for the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. In her spare time she helps her family maintain Hiram Blake Camp on Cape Rosier, and hangs out with her sister’s children. Sharri joined the Maine Rivers board because “John Banks from Penobscot Nation roped her into it” ….and adds “it’s a good group of people with a wonderful mission.” She brings a northern Maine perspective into the mix.
Chuck Verrill, Maine Rivers President
For many years Chuck practiced law in Washington D.C., most recently at Wiley Rein LLP, where he is now of counsel and Chair Emeritus of their International Trade Practice. Chuck has been an Adjunct Professor of International Trade Law at Georgetown University Law Center since 1978 and a Senior Lecturing Fellow at Duke Law School. Chuck has acted as pro bono counsel on a number of river restoration issues involving the Penobscot, Kennebec, Sebasticook, and St. Croix Rivers. For the past several years, he has been president of Islesboro Islands Trust. Chuck has six children and nine grandchildren, and is an avid fly fisherman and devoted fan of Duke basketball.
