Yarmouth, Maine officers vote to take away 2 Royal River dams, beef up fish habitat and get right of entry to. Efforts aligned with federal suggestions to revive river well being. Investment and make stronger sought from quite a lot of resources to hide $5.7 million challenge price. The town dedicated to keeping surroundings and addressing considerations.
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In a ancient vote greater than twenty years within the making, the Yarmouth, Maine, city council has voted unanimously to take away two town-owned dams at the Royal River and believe fish passage enhancements at a stretch of rapids in between them.
The verdict follows a federal proposal launched ultimate spring and is probably the most authoritative step to doing away with the Bridge Boulevard Dam and East Elm Boulevard Dam since 2009, when the city first started learning how their removing may beef up the Royal River’s well being and fisheries.
The Maine Observe, a nonprofit civic information group, reported lately that along with doing away with the 2 dams and their corresponding fishways, the city solution additionally supplies for tracking and managing fish passage past and between the dams, revegetating and stabilizing sections of the Royal’s riverbanks and protective in opposition to invasive species.
To maintain chook and fish habitat round Gooch Island, the place the East Elm Boulevard Dam slows and diverts water to the bottom of the island, the removing plan requires in some way keeping up that glide — which may well be performed thru leaving and redesigning a small phase of the dam.
On the most sensible of the solution is popularity that Yarmouth occupies the standard place of origin and unceded territory of the indigenous Wabanaki other folks, and the importance of the Royal River watershed the Wabanaki consult with as “Westcustogo.”
Yarmouth council contributors and environmental advocates had fun all through the Dec. 19 assembly when the dam removing solution used to be offered and once more on Jan. 2 when it used to be in the long run tweaked and followed, reflecting at the years of labor that resulted in the instant.
“This solution to revive the Royal River to a extra herbal, loose flowing state is a fruits of years of analysis and debate,” stated council member David Craig. “It is been an extended, advanced, and now and again emotional procedure and a productive one … Now it is time to loose the Royal.”
River Habitat, Fish Get entry to More likely to Be Progressed On River
The U.S. Military Corps of Engineers (USACE) made up our minds ultimate April that doing away with the dams has the best doable to beef up river habitat and repair fish get right of entry to towards the headwaters of the Royal River, ancient spawning grounds for sea-going fish similar to alewives that experience in large part disappeared upstream of the dams.
Because the record’s liberate of the record, each the city council and a town-assembled Royal River activity pressure had been assembly with the USACE, taking public remark and crafting a solution that aligns with the federal company’s suggestions.
The USACE adopted up with a extra thorough draft environmental affect overview in October, which affirmed doing away with the dams do not have hostile results at the surroundings nor the city harbor on the mouth of the Royal River.
Marina house owners in Yarmouth Harbor have lengthy voiced considerations in regards to the doable presence of chemical contaminants in sediments that experience collected in the back of the dams, and the USACE’s ruling used to be a pivotal ultimate step in opposition to removing.
“Chemical concentrations in sediment samples taken on the dams have been discovered to be very low,” in keeping with the company, which predicted that removing would simplest motive momentary will increase in water turbidity [murkiness caused by floating sediment], minor riverbank erosion, and a few air and noise air pollution from the development apparatus wanted for the demolition.
“None of those momentary results will considerably have an effect on the surroundings,” the record concluded.
The solution additionally instructs Yarmouth officers to lend a hand native companies in acquiring and financing “possibility mitigation insurance coverage” to make stronger the quay house owners, leaning on tax increment financing “when suitable and to be had.”
The strategy is frequently utilized by municipalities to divert long term assets tax revenues to fund public initiatives.
Even if councilors have been assured within the protection of removing, Craig advised The Maine Observe that the insurance coverage measure is vital in “addressing the monetary dangers confronted by means of the ones companies in opposition to the very low however non-zero possibility from sediment shipping and sediment high quality.”
The USACE estimated the whole price of the challenge to be round $5.7 million in its October draft record. Must Yarmouth transfer forward with the dams’ removing, the city can be vulnerable to duvet 35 p.c of that price, or $2 million, regardless that the solution does no longer make that dedication.
Yarmouth’s city councilors famous that despite the fact that a concrete investment plan isn’t but in position, the city has performed its due diligence and is assured in its fundraising talents. They cited grant alternatives to be had throughout the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Management (NOAA) that will give you the city with extra flexibility than strictly contracting with USACE, in keeping with the Observe.
“We do not need the entirety we would like to have. We need to decide with the most productive knowledge in entrance folks,” stated Karin Orenstein, the council’s vice chair, explaining that an identical city selections hardly ever have a one hundred pc plan earlier than they’re made.
To relieve considerations amongst Yarmouth taxpayers in regards to the prices of dam removing effort, the council added a clause on the Jan. 2 assembly that forbids the city from financing the challenge with assets tax revenues, as an alternative authorizing outdoor investment resources from govt businesses, nonprofits and philanthropic organizations.
The solution additionally contains assurances that Yarmouth would pursue outdoor investment to take care of game and get right of entry to to the Royal River each inside city limits and upstream in North Yarmouth, the place the river’s glide can be diminished to ancient, rather decrease ranges with dam removing.
‘Rivers Are About Alternate’
In remarks to the city council, Yarmouth resident Landis Hudson mirrored on her years of labor advocating for the dams’ removing and recovery of the Royal River as govt director of the environmental nonprofit Maine Rivers.
She counseled the city for navigating the contentious removing resolution that different cities like Dover-Foxcroft have lately rejected.
“It isn’t simple to have conversations with people who find themselves fearful in regards to the long term, who see what they see and don’t need it to switch,” Hudson stated, however “existence is set alternate. Rivers are about alternate.”
