Hydro dams implicated in large-scale fish kills
Courtesy / Ed Friedman, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay
Conservation groups say that thousands of fish have been killed at dams in Ellsworth and Brunswick.
Courtesy / Friends of Merrymeeting Bay
Brookfield Energy's dam between Brunswick and Topsham.
Thousands of dead fish have been discovered at two sites in Ellsworth and Brunswick over the past week and conservation groups say they’ve been asking state and federal agencies as well as a dam operator for answers.
“We’re not getting any response from either the agencies or the power company as to what they intend to do to prevent this from continuing,” Dwayne Shaw of the Downeast Salmon Federation told Maine Public. “And we understand that the same situation is underway down on the Androscoggin.”
Shaw told Maine Public that staff of the Downeast Salmon Federation discovered the dead alewives in the Union River below the Leonard Lake Hydro Dam in Ellsworth about a week ago. According to Shaw, many of those fish appeared to have been struck by the turbine blades of the dam.
A similar situation is unfolding near the Brunswick-Topsham dam, where Ed Friedman of the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay told Maine Public that thousands of fish are estimated to have been killed by the dam operated by Brookfield Energy, which wrote in a statement that the company is “constantly working to minimize the potential environmental impacts associated with our operations and activities.”
According to a release from the Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, the only way for the migratory fish to pass through the Brunswick-Topsham dam is through several pipes that some consider to be too close to the dam’s turbines and which create water flows that aren’t ideal for safe passage.
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