posted 07-05- 09:06 AM            

Dual personality rules river

By GRACE MURPHY, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. 

One mile upstream from Nexfor Fraser's pulp mill in Berlin, N.H., a trout breaks the surface of the Androscoggin River while leaping for a stone fly.

Peaks of the White Mountains frame city workers eating lunch on the riverbank. A couple out for a leisurely canoe ride paddle silently by.

It's a bucolic scene, but only part of the story - there is also a slight smell of sulphur, the rumble of lumber trucks, and a white cloud of steam rising from the mill's smokestack.

The Androscoggin River is both an ecological treasure and an industrial waterway flowing through New Hampshire and Maine. In some spots, it offers world-class fishing and habitat for bald eagles. In others, it is too polluted for swimming - so dirty that industries are required to pump oxygen into its waters so living things can survive below the surface.

At 177 miles, the Androscoggin is Maine's third-longest river, behind the St. John and the Penobscot. Its 3,500-square-mile watershed includes the pristine Lake Umbagog and upland ponds, rich farmland in Canton and Turner, and the rare inland tidal delta of Merrymeeting Bay.

Before European settlers arrived, the river was a major highway for Maine's American Indians, who fished along its falls, farmed its valleys and harvested rice in its estuary.

When colonists arrived, they used the river as the foundation for their economy. It delivered logs from upland forests to paper mills along the river, provided hydropower and carried waste out to the ocean.

The mills and dams, along with raw sewage from riverside communities, degraded the river to the point that parts were considered biologically dead.

There are still four paper companies along the Androscoggin that employ hundreds of people. They use river water when turning pulp into paper, as well as to flush away treated waste.

At the same time, the Androscoggin provides a rich array of ecological resources, drawing tourists from out of state. There's something for everyone, as people rediscover the river's natural wonders - kayaking in Errol, N.H., fly-fishing in the White Mountain valley or training for canoe races near Lewiston.

ECOLOGICAL LOSSES AND GAINS

In the past, the economic benefits the mills and hydropower companies produced held sway over environmental concerns. But there seems to be a growing appreciation for the river's natural offerings, with advocacy groups forming and demanding more aggressive pollution enforcement and cleanup.

The outcome of the conflict between industry and ecology will affect the paper companies' costs of doing business in Maine, and the amount of money communities invest in their waterfronts. It will also determine whether fish and plant species wiped out by severe pollution ever return to the Androscoggin Valley.

The river has improved tremendously since the days mills and municipalities dumped raw waste into the water. In the 1960s, the river was one of the most polluted in the United States, and the water quality was so poor that fish could not survive.

State and federal environmental laws - particularly the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 - took care of the worst of the problems.

From most spots along the river today, including Berlin, the Androscoggin looks fine.

But the river is still Maine's most polluted, according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the state's major environmental advocacy group. Environmentalists like Naomi Shalit of Maine Rivers say appearances are deceiving.

Shalit recently told a meeting of the Androscoggin Land Trust that the river may be suffering from its successes - because it looked so much worse before, many people think it is fine now.

“It doesn't smell too bad, there isn't foam coming down it, so what's the problem?” she said.

Shalit wants regulators to hold paper companies to stricter pollution standards before renewing their licenses, and not succumb to arguments that more stringent environmental controls will shut the mills down.

Paper companies along the river, including Nexfor Fraser, are quick to point out the expensive environmental investments they've made at a time of instability in the pulp and paper markets.

Greg Cyr, human resources manager for the Nexfor Fraser plants in Berlin and Gorham, said the company wants to make the river better and preserve jobs as well.

“You can't just eliminate all of it because you have the desire to get back to hundreds of years ago,” he said.

BUILDING TO AN INDUSTRIAL HEYDAY

The river's drainage area extends into western Maine around Rangeley Lake, but the river itself begins north of Errol at the confluence of the Magalloway River and Lake Umbagog.

The upper portion of the river, from Errol to Berlin, is largely undeveloped. It features rare plants, trout fishing worthy of national magazine features, and state parks and scenic areas.

Before European settlers arrived, nomadic Abenaki tribes used the Androscoggin for transportation and fishing. They would set up camps near the bases of falls along the lower half of the river, catching sea-run fish as they swam upstream to spawn.

The tribes also set up temporary camps along the river's flood plains, such as Canton Point, where they would grow corn, beans and squash.

The river travels south to Gorham, N.H., then east across the New Hampshire-Maine border through the resort town of Bethel, where fishing, canoeing and kayaking tournaments are held in the summer.

From there, the river winds north to the mill towns of Rumford and Jay, then south through Lewiston-Auburn and eventually Brunswick.

The river ends in the tidal estuary of Merrymeeting Bay, where five other rivers, including the Kennebec, converge.

The 9,000-acre inland tidal delta that is Merrymeeting Bay is home to a rich variety of plant and animal life, including popular game fish like striped bass and rare or endangered species such as short-nose and Atlantic sturgeon, and bald eagles.

Tribes had as many as 60 names for the river, including “Amariscoggin” or “Amascoggin,” according to Charles M. Starbird's book, “The Indians of the Androscoggin.”

The various meanings assigned to the river's name include “curing place for fish” and “fish country in springtime,” according to the Appalachian Mountain Club.

What had been a transportation route and food source for the Indians became a source of power and a waste receptacle for European settlers.

From Berlin to Brunswick, the river was gradually strung with mills for making lumber, textiles, shoes and paper.

Brunswick had cotton and paper mills. Lewiston became known for its cotton and wool mills, canals and shoe industry.

The northern New Hampshire city of Berlin became a center for logging in the 1880s, earning the nicknames “City That Trees Built” and “Paper City.”

Men would head for the forests and begin cutting trees in October, returning in April when others would drive the logs downriver.

For a few weeks each spring, the two shifts would overlap in Berlin, increasing the year-round population by a third, or about 6,000 people.

“I tell my class the stories and they can't believe it. They think it's pretty dead here,” said Paul “Poof” Tardiff, a local historian and junior high school teacher. “They can't believe it when I tell them people couldn't walk on the sidewalk because it was so crowded on a Friday night.”

Rumford and Jay became big paper mill towns, with Rumford known for its paper bags and postcards, and Jay for the leatherboard used in books.

THE PRICE OF GROWTH

The nation's demand for paper took its toll on the Androscoggin. The log drives tore up the bottom of the river, destroying fish habitat. Bark and debris choked parts of the river. Dynamite used to assist in the drives changed the river's course, and the dams that generated power for the mills changed the water's temperature and flow.

Chemicals and wastewater used to make pulp and paper poured into the river and the sky, polluting the water downstream and blanketing towns with odors.

The environmental problems were seen as the price of having a large employer provide thousands of well-paying jobs in a rural area.

In environmental circles, the argument is described as “pickerel vs. payroll.”

Locals have their own phrases.

“You hear, 'Boy it stinks here, but that smell is our cash,' “ Tardiff said.

For much of the 1900s, the Androscoggin was considered one of the most polluted rivers in the nation. It was featured in a 1970 edition of Newsweek magazine as one of America's 10 filthiest rivers, alongside the Houston Ship Channel, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio and the Passaic River in New Jersey.

Billions of gallons of waste from the mills, along with sewage from municipalities, were dumped into the river each year. Human waste could be seen floating downstream, when the water's surface wasn't covered with foam.

The river carried entrails and feathers from poultry plants, its emissions discolored the paint of homes and cars, and swirls of dye changed the water's natural color.

Problems from waste dumping were compounded by the dams built by mills to control water flow and produce power. They prevented sea-run fish from returning to spawn and created slow-moving impoundments that trap pollutants. The biggest of these is north of Lewiston at Gulf Island Pond, above a dam built by Central Maine Power.

A RIVER CHANGES COURSE

State and federal pollution standards adopted in the past 40 years have helped the river rebound and made it safer for recreation.

One of the most influential was the Clean Water Act, which was sponsored by Rumford native and former U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie.

Chuck Knox, executive director of the Androscoggin River Watershed Council, said he is certain Muskie carried the image of the Androscoggin with him to Washington, where he shepherded the bill through Congress until its adoption in 1972.

“He grew up in a time when the river was extremely polluted,” Knox said.

The act required paper plants and other industries to obtain permits for discharging waste through pipes into the river.

It also helped create and fund the construction of municipal sewage treatment plants.

A granite marker honors the late senator on Rumford's riverbank, near an information center on Route 2.

Subsequent laws required mills and other polluters to reduce discharges, and established standards controlling color, odor and foam pollutants.

Maine regulators used their authority to require industries along the Androscoggin to pay for oxygenation of the river at Gulf Island Pond - pure oxygen is pumped into the narrowest part of the 14-mile impoundment in an effort to improve water quality, but conditions there still do not meet the environmental standards that apply to the rest of the river.

Maine's Department of Environmental Protection has tried for years to resolve the problem and could impose new pollution controls on the river's four paper mills this year.

The paper companies are also investigating the cost and effectiveness of adding one or more oxygenators.

Companies with mills on the river are Nexfor Fraser in Berlin and Gorham, N.H.; Mead Westvaco in Rumford; and International Paper Inc. and Wausau-Mosinee Paper, both with mills in Jay.

GETTING SOLD ON RECREATION

Not everyone wants to rely on government regulation to effect change in the Androscoggin. Land trusts are buying tracts along the river to prevent development and preserve public access.

Lewiston and Auburn have invested more than $3 million over the past decade on riverfront improvements in areas where textile mills once discharged waste. A pedestrian walkway connects both cities and includes several parks. More projects are planned.

Both cities are marketing the river views to prospective businesses.

Bethel promotes its river walk, fishing and canoeing prospects.

Even Gulf Island Pond's bass fishing attracts accolades, and it is known for its summer fishing tournaments.

The rebounding health of the Androscoggin, and people's changing attitudes about it, made it possible for Rumford native Sandy MacGregor to build his Mountain Ranger Guide Service around it in the late 1990s.

MacGregor estimates that more than a third of his income comes from fishing trips along the Androscoggin. Another third comes from wildlife tours for customers who want to see moose, eagles or simply the peaks of the White Mountains from the river.

MacGregor knows the importance of the river to the Rumford paper mill and the town - his grandfather worked there, and his parents. He worked at a paper machine in the mill for a time until his department was shut down.

But the river is also important to MacGregor and other guides, adventure shops and campgrounds that rely on its quality for a living.

He believes the mills should not release treated water into the river that is of a lower quality than the water it took in.

“I don't want anybody to lose their job, but I think the river cleaner is worth more economically than the value of the economy based on the industry that is on it,” MacGregor said.

A TROUBLED INDUSTRY PROTESTS

As advocates for a cleaner river are making their voices heard, economic troubles in the pulp and paper industry are making some people reluctant to pressure the companies too much.

Tardiff, the Berlin historian, said the mill closures of 2001, and subsequent reopenings, have made jobs a bigger issue than the environment.

The former owner of the mills went bankrupt in 2001, putting more than 800 people out of work.

Employees who'd worked in the mills for decades were suddenly without jobs. Small businesses that relied on the mills closed. The city lost its biggest taxpayer. Residents fell behind on home and car payments.

Berlin tried hard to find ways to diversify what was left of its economy. The idea of hosting a casino was proposed, and talks began with the federal government in hopes of attracting a proposed prison.

Nexfor Fraser Papers Inc. took over the mills, and restarted paper production in 2002, and the pulp mill in 2003. The company was able to hire back former workers and now employs about 600 people, Cyr said.

It also spent $33 million in the past year and a half on a new boiler and generator to increase efficiency and comply with air and water pollution standards.

There is still high unemployment in the area, and the constant worry that shifts in the paper market or sudden costs related to upgrades could put jobs at risk again, Tardiff said.

“When the mill closed, Berlin had nothing left for large industry. It tore at the people. You don't get over that quickly,” he said.

Some Maine lawmakers and environmental activists are concerned that the paper companies are using jobs as a threat to avoid investing in new environmental controls.

“Those arguments frighten people, and so they're powerful. They exploit people's worst fears. To use them is cynical,” said Shalit, of Maine Rivers.

She said a consultant hired by the state found that when companies invested in cleaner technology, they could become more competitive and cost-efficient. Workers might have more job security at mills willing to make such investments, she said.

WALKING A FINE LINE

Earlier this year, the Maine Legislature was forced to confront the river's dual identities when it tried to set pollution standards for the state's dirtiest rivers.

It decided to continue to allow the mills and treatment plants on the Androscoggin and St. Croix rivers to release more pollution, at least temporarily, than they would if they were on other rivers in Maine.

The guidelines adopted were favored by the paper companies and objected to by the Lewiston-Auburn delegation and en- vironmentalists.

State Rep. Elaine Makas, D-Lewiston, said legislators need to know the river is more than a highway for waste.

“People talk about this being a working river, as though it's an appropriate place to dump stuff. It's like they're saying it's a slum anyway, who cares if the trash gets picked up? That's not acceptable,” she said.

In Berlin, Tardiff hopes regulators will take a long-term approach to any new environmental controls at the mills.

posted 07-05- 09:16 AM            

Keeping an eye on the waterway from above

By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.  

TURNER — Dale Twitchell has spent most of his life on the Androscoggin River. The brown ribbon of water that wends its way from Umbagog Lake in New Hampshire to Merrymeeting Bay in Brunswick is the landing strip for Twitchell's world-renowned seaplane base off Route 4, just north of Auburn.

It's where he gives lessons, fixes engines and chooses to spend a good part of his time.

In the more than 30 years that Twitchell has operated the family's seaplane base, he has seen the river evolve from an open sewer for various municipalities and industries, to a recognized natural resource that state officials and others are trying to nurse back to health.

He remembers when the river smelled foul. When dead fish, choked for oxygen, littered the surface on hot summer days. When it flowed the unsettling color of espresso, even in the shallows.

"You used to drop a wrench in the water and you couldn't see it," said Twitchell, 58. "It's a lot better now, and there's hardly any smell."

Twitchell has flown most of Maine's waterways, often with state environmental officials who regularly test lakes throughout the state. The 30-mile stretch of the Androscoggin from Lewiston-Auburn to Jay is Twitchell's home territory. And this is a fine, blue-sky day to do a little flying.

The engine guns. The propeller blurs. The pontoons of Twitchell's 1977 Cessna lift off the river. The breadth of Gulf Island Pond appears below, where a sculler makes a gentle wake near the Bates College boat house. Twitchell begins pointing out various landmarks.

There's a sprawling farm in Greene, where three-quarters of the fields that used to be cultivated have been sold off as house lots in the last five years. They blend with the other homes, many with aqua-blue swimming pools, that have sprouted up along the river since Maine's farmland started shrinking and the federal Clean Water Act made the Androscoggin a more attractive place to be.

"It's what's happing all around here now," Twitchell said.

There's the oxygen plant, paid for by paper companies and Central Maine Power Co., that injects a stream of bubbles into Gulf Island Pond and keeps a relatively new bass fishery thriving.

"That's been good," Twitchell said. "The fish love that oxygen. And the fishermen do, too. On the weekend, at the public boat launch at Center Bridge, you can't find a parking space, and there are so many boats on the river it's hard to land a plane."

And there's Turner River Lands, just north of the airport. It's a 2,000-acre forest along the Androscoggin that the state purchased in 1987 to forever protect it from development. Twitchell is glad it won't be turned into house lots. He has a hard enough time keeping the peace with folks who already live near the airport.

"They don't like the noise," Twitchell said. "We get complaints all the time. On a weekend, we get 15 to 20 planes landing and taking off each day and they don't like that."

Twitchell's father, Ronald, started the airport business in 1945. He was killed in the winter of 1971 when his plane crashed on takeoff while he was giving a flying lesson. The student survived, but the student's wife was killed. Dale Twitchell and his older brother, Michael, have run the business ever since.

Twitchell's Airport/Seaplane Base has long been known in central and southern Maine, and among pilots throughout New England and beyond. The operation has developed an international profile in recent years, after the company launched a Web site and started attracting flyers from the United Kingdom, Germany and throughout Europe. Pilots come during their summer vacations to be certified to fly seaplanes.

They return year after year to rent one of Twitchell's planes and fly to some of the most remote areas of Maine. Twitchell said his is the only outfit in Maine that still leases seaplanes, despite the high cost of insurance, and one of only three in New England.

Despite Twitchell's international ties, he remains most interested in what happens in his own back yard. He keeps an eye on the Androscoggin and pays attention to development along its banks.

He sees the paper mills, schools, woodlots and water treatment plants in Livermore Falls and Jay. He is familiar with the closed textile mills, churches, shopping malls and subdivisions that define the landscape of Lewiston-Auburn.

He understands the battle to preserve Maine's paper-making industry in a state that has lost 33,000 manufacturing jobs since 1990. He also understands the desire for an even cleaner Androscoggin, one that runs as clear as it does above the Rumford paper mill.

He believes the Androscoggin would improve if the mills installed better pollution controls, but he doubts state officials will force them to spend more money than they have anytime soon. The threat of losing another paper mill is too great.

"The mills gotta run," Twitchell said as his Cessna touched down on the dark water. "The river's gonna be this way for a while."

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

posted 07-06- 11:44 AM            

Sweet home on the river's edge

By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. 

TOPSHAM — Richard Nickerson likes to get up early, not long after sunrise, and sit in front of his camp on the Androscoggin River. He settles in a lawn chair, sips a mug of coffee and watches the sunlight glimmer on Merrymeeting Bay.

He imagines what it must have been like before European settlers came, when American Indians were the only people who pulled fish from the river and enjoyed its other bounties.

“It must have been quite a sight,” said Nickerson, who lives in Brunswick.

Nickerson, 65, owns one of several former hunting camps that cling to the river's edge along Pleasant Point Road. They have quaint and quirky names like Kamp Kwitcherbitchin' and Itsuitsus, and they were built decades before zoning required homes to be a good distance from the shore.

Nickerson's grandfather, Harold, built Camp Baldy in the early 1900s with some duck-hunting buddies. It was named for a trait that Nickerson shares with his grandfather. Nickerson and his wife, Beverly, replaced the original camp several years ago with a modern, insulated building with furnace, an electric toilet and picture windows that afford breathtaking views of Merrymeeting Bay.

The bay is named for the six rivers - the Androscoggin, Kennebec, Cathance, Muddy, Abagadasset and Eastern - that meet at Topsham, Bath and Bowdoinham. It is a brackish bay - about 20 percent salt water - that continues on as the Kennebec, past Woolwich, Arrowsic, Phippsburg and Georgetown Island, to the Atlantic Ocean.

Nickerson loves the river and the bay. He's more familiar with the seven-mile stretch that starts at the Brunswick Dam than many people are with the route they drive to work each day.

It's the route that his great-grandfather, Edward, drove a tugboat and barge when he hauled coal for the Pejepscot mills in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It's where Nickerson spent much of his free time growing up and throughout adulthood, duck hunting and fishing for stripers.

It's where his son, Harold, and his two granddaughters now swim and water ski because municipalities stopped dumping sewage in the river in the 1970s and the paper mills closed in the 1980s. And it's where Nickerson has conducted monthly water quality tests for Friends of Merrymeeting Bay since he retired from running the family trucking company several years ago.

Nickerson logs information about the river's clarity and oxygen levels in a notebook and sends water samples to state environmental officials.

“We compare the clarity to tap water and most times its just as clear,” Nickerson said, pointing out some of his most recent readings. “The oxygen levels are usually pretty good, too.”

Nickerson jumps at the chance to get out on the Androscoggin and show off its many features. His motor boat heads upriver, past Freyer Island, where a family of bald eagles stakes out the waterway, and Mustard Island, where stone footings mark the location of a wooden bridge that once crossed the river.

Here the Androscoggin is wide and the banks are low. It is lined with oaks, maples and willows and feels more like a lake than a river. Several osprey circle overhead and occasionally plunge like stones, rising from the water with fish clutched in their talons.

Soon Nickerson spots James Brawn, a neighbor who owns the camp called Itsuitsus. Brawn is fishing in the camouflage duck boat he built himself of fiberglass and pine. It is Brawn's first time out on the river this year. He has two lines running, hoping for a striper strike, but he's not too concerned about catching a fish.

“I'm really just out to be in the air,” said Brawn, 70, who lives in Bowdoinham.

The Androscoggin is a special place for Brawn.

“I grew up here and I always end up back here,” he said. “Some day you'll probably find my ashes floating here.”

Nickerson's boat continues upriver. A dozen great blue heron line the bank of one island, standing tall in the shade of the water's edge. Another family of bald eagles swoops from one branch to the next. Along the way, Nickerson recalls interesting tidbits of river history.

There are the granite banks that made it necessary to outfit barges with protective bumpers. There's the spot where an underground spring forced cold, clean water into the river, and where barges regularly stopped to refill their drinking water supplies.

And there's the point of land where an ambitious businessman built Merrymeeting Park in 1898. It featured a casino, amphitheater, outdoor dance pavilion and a white horse that dove into a tank of water. The park closed in 1906 because there weren't enough people in the Brunswick area to sustain such an attraction, but some locals say it rivaled Old Orchard Beach in its day.

Nickerson swings the boat around at the landmark Bowdoin Mill, just below the Brunswick Dam, where the Sea Dog Brewing Co. is located. Several people lounge and fish on the rocky riverbank.

Heading back out to Merrymeeting Bay, Nickerson notes the public boat launch, walking path and park that Brunswick has built where Route 1 runs along the Androscoggin. Swirls of sand, lifted by the rising tide, float on the surface in coves where the river runs calm.

Vast fields of wild rice, jostled by the wind, mark the start of the bay. In September, ducks heading south for the winter will fly low to knock the rice off its stalks and circle back to feed on the pellets floating in the water. No channels are marked, so boaters must know where they're going and respect the changing nature of the river and the bay, especially if they're in canoes or kayaks.

“The bay can get pretty rough pretty quick,” Nickerson said. “We've pulled quite a few people out of the bay because they flipped over.”

Boaters also must be careful not to get stranded by the tide. “You can enjoy the bay,” Nickerson said, “but you've got about two hours before high tide and two hours after to do it.”

Nickerson loops by Pleasant Point and another eagle's nest and heads for home. He pulls his motor boat up to the dock. A woman and child swim nearby. He marvels at how clean the water has become and how dirty it was.

“You couldn't catch a fish in it. You couldn't swim in it,” Nickerson said. “People didn't enjoy the river like they do today.”

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

posted 07-06- 11:49 AM            

Health of vital bay hinges on six rivers

By GRACE MURPHY, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.  

BOWDOINHAM — The duck hunting on Merrymeeting Bay is considered the best in the state, but it wasn't always that way. Twenty years ago, pollution from the Androscoggin River used to tip off the blacks, mallards and green-winged teal to the presence of hunters below.

George Race Jr., a registered guide, would set up his decoys, then retreat and wait for the ducks to circle. If too much time went by, a film would form on the decoys.

"We would have to go and scrub that off and it would create a white foam around them. The ducks are too smart for that," he said.

Race hasn't had a problem with foam for years, and he believes it's because the two industrial rivers that empty into Merrymeeting Bay are cleaner.

Located between Topsham, Bath, Bowdoinham, Richmond, Dresden and Woolwich, Merrymeeting Bay is a placid body of water where six rivers converge. They include the industrial Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers, and the smaller Muddy, Cathance, Abagadassett and Eastern rivers.

The 9,000-acre bay is considered one of the largest and most important freshwater tidal ecosystems in the United States.

The mixture of fresh and salt water, sheltered mudflats and forested banks provides habitat for bald eagles, Atlantic salmon and rare plants. A well-organized and dedicated advocacy group, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, collects water quality data, teaches in the schools and promotes land conservation easements in an effort to protect the bay's ecosystems.

But the health of Merrymeeting Bay is dependent on the water quality of the rivers upstream. That includes the Androscoggin, Maine's third largest river and its most polluted.

Nomadic Abenaki tribes used to set up camps along the Androscoggin, catching sea-run fish and farming its tidal plains. Archaeological evidence indicates that major Native American settlements existed along the bay as long as 12,000 years ago, according to Friends of Merrymeeting Bay.

When Europeans arrived, they used the Androscoggin to dispose of sewage and industrial waste. By the early 1900s, the river was one of the most polluted in the nation. Dams and pollution put an end to the return of sea-run fish like Atlantic salmon and shad.

The river's surface was often covered with foam, or murky with chemicals. Few houses were built along the river because of foul odors and emissions that discolored the paint on houses and cars.

Adoption of state and federal pollution standards, such as the Clean Water Act of 1972, helped lead to a recovery of both the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers.

Friends of Merrymeeting Bay was formed in 1975, primarily by sportsmen concerned about the effect the filthy rivers had on hunting, said Ed Friedman, the group's research and advocacy chairman.

The group has evolved over the years to devote more effort to research, education, conservation and stewardship. It also creates partnerships with groups that have similar goals, such as The Nature Conservancy, Friends of Casco Bay and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

There are still mills on the river - Nexfor Fraser's in Berlin and Gorham, N.H.; Mead Westvaco's in Rumford; and International Paper Inc. and Wausau-Mosinee Paper, with mills in Jay.

The plants now treat their waste extensively before sending it into the river, but they are still the biggest source of phosphorus discharges into the Androscoggin. Phosphorus causes algae blooms and changes the chemistry of the river in ways that reduce oxygen levels for fish.

Water quality is also compromised by runoff from farms, parking lots and roads.

The most polluted section of the river is at Gulf Island Pond in Lewiston, where polluted sediment from mills and municipalities settles behind the dam that created the impoundment.

Sediment from the Androscoggin also settles in the upper part of Merrymeeting Bay, but unlike the situation at Gulf Island Pond, it does not stay there.

Water from the Androscoggin and the Kennebec slows at The Chops, a narrow spot in the bay in Woolwich. When the tide rises, the river water stops and flows back upstream.

A handout distributed by the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay explains how pollutants that don't settle can attach to suspended bacteria, algae and microorganisms. As the particles are dispersed by the tides, they can be ingested by fish and birds.

What happens in the bay literally happens in Friedman's front yard.

He can see the Abagadassett and Androscoggin flow into the bay from his front porch. He tends to organic leeks, basil and pepper not far from the sea grass, and leads whitewater and sea kayaking tours along the bay.

Friedman was discouraged this year when the Legislature set pollution standards for the state's dirtiest rivers that allow mills and treatment plants on the Androscoggin and St. Croix rivers to release more pollution, at least temporarily, than they would if they were on other rivers in Maine. The standard was adopted after paper mills said a tougher limit might endanger jobs.

Friedman said the new standard affects the hunting, fishing and bird-watching that attracts tourists to the bay.

"We're something of a repository for whatever makes it this far," he said. "We have the studies, but we're outlobbied at least 10 to one."

That could change. The nonprofit group Maine Rivers is on a mission to cultivate awareness and support for the Androscoggin in its entirety, not just at its mouth or its most polluted sections.

Executive Director Naomi Shalit is working with residents up and down the river to form a new advocacy group.

"I think one of the problems we've had over the years is, with the dams, we've tended to think of our river in chunks rather than whole rivers. We need a voice for this whole river," she said.

posted 07-23- 07:04 AM            

Pond fighting for its life

By GRACE MURPHY, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.  

TURNER — Second in a series

Gulf Island Pond looks like a healthy place, with an abundance of smallmouth bass, a few shy otters and darting dragonflies. But life along the 14-mile impoundment on the Androscoggin River is dependent on artificial means, like a person with lung disease who needs an oxygen tank to breathe.

A century's worth of pollution has settled along the floor of the pond, consuming the oxygen that fish and other organisms need to survive.

A plant in Greene pumps more than 70,000 pounds of pure oxygen into the pond each day during the summer, helping to keep fish and other marine life alive.

Despite the additional oxygen, parts of the pond do not meet the pollution standards that apply to the rest of the Androscoggin River. The pond's poor water quality has put it at the center of an environmental debate that involves paper companies, conservationists, regulators and area residents.

The Androscoggin, Maine's third largest river, boasts a world-class trout fishery in its upper reaches. It attracts a growing number of canoeists and kayakers to its midsection and nourishes rare species like bald eagles and Atlantic sturgeon in the tidal estuary where it ends.

Yet the Androscoggin is also the state's most polluted river. Communities along its banks pour treated wastewater into the river, as do several paper mills in western Maine and eastern New Hampshire.

The wastewater discharge licenses for the Maine mills have expired, giving the state Department of Environmental Protection an opportunity to apply new treatment standards that could improve conditions in the river.

If the standards are too strict, the mills fear they could not absorb costly environmental upgrades and remain open.

State Rep. Thomas Saviello, D-Wilton, is also manager of environment, health and safety at International Paper in Jay. He is interested in finding the balance between improving the river and preserving 1,130 jobs at the paper company.

"The paper industry is in an ultra-competitive war now. We're competing with China. You tell me what environmental regulations they have. We're competing with southeast Asia. You tell me what environmental regulations they have," the Democrat from Wilton said.

But if the standards are too weak, environmentalists fear the water quality will remain the same or become worse.

"I'm glad there are bass out there," said Naomi Shalit, executive director of the nonprofit group, Maine Rivers. "But our rivers by law are supposed to support a lot more native species, like trout and salmon. I don't think using bass as a measure of the health of the river is a good gauge."

The Androscoggin begins about 140 miles upstream from Gulf Island Pond. Its headwaters are in western Maine at Rangeley Lake, but the river itself starts north of Errol, N.H., at the confluence of the Magalloway River and Lake Umbagog.

The river flows west and south through northeastern New Hampshire, then southeast through Maine until it joins the Kennebec River in Merrymeeting Bay near Brunswick.

For more than a century, lumber, textile and paper mills, and later sewage treatment plants, have released wastewater into the Androscoggin. Dams that were built to control water levels, power the mills or generate electricity also degraded the river's health.

The dams trapped sediment, raised temperatures by slowing the flow of water and prevented migratory fish from getting upstream to spawn.

By the early 1900s, the Androscoggin was one of the most polluted rivers in the nation.

It remained that way until Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. Water quality standards applied under the law drove a 25-year cleanup that has radically altered the river's appearance and improved its health. Gone are the chemical foams, putrid odors and floating human waste that once fouled the waters. Fish have returned, and with them many birds, boaters and anglers.

The Androscoggin now plays an important role in the state's ecotourism industry, as a place for fishing, birdwatching and enjoying wildlife.

But the river is still far from clean. Four paper mills continue to use the Androscoggin - Nexfor Fraser's mills in Berlin and Gorham, N.H.; Mead Westvaco's in Rumford; and International Paper Inc. and Wausau-Mosinee Paper, both with mills in Jay.

Municipal sewage plants also release treated wastewater into the river, and its waters absorb runoff from farms, lawns and paved roads.

Nowhere are the unsolved problems more evident than at Gulf Island Pond, an impoundment north of Lewiston created when Central Maine Power built a dam more than 80 years ago.

Sediment in the waste discharged upstream builds up behind the dam, which is now owned by Florida Power & Light.

As the sediment decomposes, it consumes dissolved oxygen needed by fish to survive. In July and August, when phosphorus runoff from roads and fields creates algae blooms, oxygen levels plunge even lower, particularly in the deeper parts of the pond.

Environmentalists, state officials and the paper mills upstream have spent years trying to improve conditions in the pond.

The state forced the mills and CMP to build a $2.3 million plant, which has pumped oxygen into the river each summer since 1992.

The injection process creates a stream of bubbles that connects both banks of the river at the pond's narrowest point, creating an effect similar to a hot tub.

Signs are posted on the pond to explain the bubbling process to fishermen and boaters.

Jay Volnernick, a Canton resident who fishes on the pond, said he doesn't mind the bubbles if they're improving the river. "If it's good for the water, it's good for the fish," he said.

Over the past year, a committee of interested parties debated what water quality standard the pond should meet going into the future. Members included the paper companies, Florida Power & Light, government regulators, labor and environmental groups and municipalities.

Committee members reviewed and hashed out the recommendations contained in a consultants' report issued last year that listed changes the mills along the river could make to improve water quality even further. Some of the options included improved personnel training, correcting weaknesses in existing waste treatment systems, and replacement of aeration tanks at the mills' wastewater treatment plants.

The DEP may use the study to help it set treatment standards as part of the relicensing of the mills.

Saviello, the International Paper manager, said his company already complies with some of the recommendations in the report, but that other steps have proved to be far more costly than was projected by the consultants.

Sandy MacGregor, a Maine Guide who leads fishing and wildlife tours along the Androscoggin above the pond, said he is sympathetic to the industry's economic concerns.

MacGregor, like his grandfather, father, and neighbors, once worked in the Rumford paper mill.

But he believes the state should not allow the mills to have a negative impact on the river.

"They need a filtration system to remove organics, or some way to get rid of the phosphates. Oxygenation is a stop-gap measure which is faulty in design, and it's a cheap way out for them," he said.

While oxygenation has its detractors, it does improve water conditions, and there is a chance of seeing more bubbles on the pond. The state has asked the paper companies to submit a study about the cost and effectiveness of pumping more oxygen into the river.

Possible locations for additional oxygen diffusers in the impoundment include Turner Bridge and Lower Narrows.

Bob Ouellette, conservation chairman of Androscoggin Bass Masters, a local fishing club, said another diffuser would help, even though it's the cheapest possible option being investigated by the mills. "They're trying to find ways to get around expenses to get their licensing. But anything positive would gain our support," he said.

Ouellette adds that he tries to take a long-term view of the problem.

"It's not like it was 40, 50 years ago when you actually could see raw sewage floating down," he said. "But it's been polluted for hundreds of years, and all that pollution has settled, and it'll take a long time to dissipate."

The state plans on holding public meetings in the Lewiston-Auburn and Rumford-Jay areas before it relicenses the mills. There is no date set for the meetings, but they are expected to take place after new water quality data is collected and analyzed this summer.

State Rep. Elaine Makas, D-Lewiston, said it's important for people who live, work and play along the river, and especially Gulf Island Pond, to attend.

Lewiston and Auburn have invested millions in developing their waterfront, where textile mills once emptied into the river. A pedestrian walkway and bridge along the river connects both cities and includes several parks.

Both cities are marketing the river views to prospective businesses, and holding festivals along its banks.