BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 2, 2021
Representatives of The Nature Conservancy met with the owner of four Kennebec River dams in 2017 to discuss how to improve fish passage at one of the structures in Fairfield. The parties could not agree, kicking off political strife that boiled over this year. At the heart of the issue is the Atlantic salmon, an iconic fish that once dominated rivers across the country but whose wild population is now limited to Maine. Environmentalists have long seen dam removals as key to getting salmon to their spawning ground up the river. The Nature Conservancy approached the dam owner, Brookfield Renewable U.S., in 2019 with a proposal to sell the four dams after they and state and federal agencies failed to reach agreement on how to improve fish passage. The Nature Conservancy’s role in the sale talks has not yet been publicized and the overall struggle is just the latest over the future of dams in Maine, where even successful removal efforts have taken years.