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Courtesy / Maine Department of Environmental Protection
Environmental officials take a look at one of the culverts on Bacon Road over Crooked Brook in Charleston.
A 16-year process to make up for environmental damage caused by oil discharge at the Chevron oil terminal site on the Penobscot River in Hampden is finally seeing results upstream, with new bridges in Charleston and Hampden.
The $440,000 project that replaced six culvert road crossings with bridges over the summer was paid for out of an $800,000 settlement in 2016, related to decades of discharge into the Penobscot River watershed and Penobscot Bay. The discharge was discovered in 2006 and has yet to be fully cleaned up.
Upgrades to the the road crossings over Crooked Brook in Charleston and Sucker Brook in Hampden will open 13 miles of stream to migratory fish, as well as improve water quality, help reduce regular road washouts and more. The rest of the $800,000 will go to similar upgrades in Sedgwick and Brooksville, in Hancock County.
The 2016 Chevron marine oil terminal Natural Resources Damages settlement was the second related to the oil spills. A $900,000 settlement in 2011 was aimed at cleaning up the groundwater and soil in the area; the more recent settlement was aimed at restoring natural resources lost to the damage.
The 2011 was the largest environmental penalty secured by the state in 20 years, Mainebiz reported at the time.
Under the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration program, which oversees the restoration project, federal and state trustees restore species and habitats injured by oil and hazardous substance spills at no cost to local communities. The projects also used money from other local sources and environmental groups to enhance what was provided by the program.
Local construction crews replaced undersized and poorly functioning culverts at the six crossings this summer after the projects were announced in February. The new bridges span the width of the waterways and are designed to restore the natural stream bed, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Crooked Brook is at the headwaters of Kenduskeag Stream, which is a tributary to the Penobscot River, and the stream crossing upgrades are part of a Kenduskeag headwaters resilience project. In Hampden, Sucker Brook feeds directly into the Penobscot River.
Government and private organizations are working to restore endangered Atlantic salmon throughout the watershed. The upgraded crossings allow migratory fish — including Atlantic salmon, blueback herring, American eel, sea lamprey, and brook trout — to reach important spawning and rearing habitat.
“These settlement funds will help create a more resilient and healthy Penobscot River watershed, which benefits many communities in Maine,” said Wendi Weber, North Atlantic-Appalachian regional director for the USFWS. “This work benefits not only natural resources but also people by providing more-passable roads, cleaner water, and better fishing.”
Aside from restoring migratory fish access, which helps boost the local ecosystem and provide better fishing opportunities, the work will also mitigate some of the effects of climate change, particularly chronic flooding on the roads, environmental and government officials said.
Flooding at the crossings in Charleston disrupts travel and causes costly road repairs, said town select board member Terri-Lynn Hall. The upgrades will lower the risk of flooding and washouts, making the crossings more resilient to climate change as sea water rises, saving the town money and reducing disruption for residents.
“At least twice a year, certain crossings completely wash out, making the road impassable,” Hall said. “The environmental and financial cost is astronomical for the town. It would have taken many, many years for the town to complete this work.”
The Atlantic Salmon Federation partnered on the project, and John R.J. Burrows, executive director of U.S. operations, said while such projects may seem small, they're important.
“We not only provided great benefits to endangered Atlantic salmon, brook trout, and many other fish and wildlife species, but we also helped a small town permanently fix a number of problematic road-stream crossings in a way that will minimize long-term maintenance and repairs costs and make the freshwater environment more resilient to a rapidly changing climate,” he said in the news release.
Chevron USA Inc. and Texaco Inc. operated two marine oil terminals in Hampden from the early 1900s through the mid-1980s, with Chevron keeping liability for both terminals, the state said.
The Coast Guard first noticed a sheen on the water near the terminals in 2006, and the subsequent investigation determined that Chevron released more than 140,000 gallons of oil onto the shores of the Penobscot River from the 1950s through the 1980s.
The state Department of Environmental Protection first issued Chevron a violation notice in 2007 and oversaw a multimillion dollar cleanup at the site. One of the terminals was removed in 2014, and one is still in operation.
Since cleanup began, approximately 38,620 gallons of petroleum have been removed from the ground at the site. Despite the remedial measures, the baseline condition of the area couldn't be restored, the state report says. Oil discharge over the years had irreparably injured riverine, wetland and floodplain habitats, groundwater resources and recreational opportunities around the site, according to a report the state released in February.
Of the rest of the 2017 settlement, $250,000 goes to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust to restore fish passages in Brooksville that will allow alewives to access Parker Pond from Mill Stream and Walker Pond from the Bagaduce River.
The Nature Conservancy will use $125,000 to replace a failing culvert on Route 15 over Snow Brook that will give fish access to another six miles of waterway. As it is now, the culvert doesn't allow fish through.
Of the $900,000 settlement in 2011, $520,000 went to the town of Hampden. That money was used it to build 8.5-acre Turtle Head Cove Municipal Park. The other $380,000 went to the Maine Coastal and Inland Surface Oil Clean-up Fund, which catches and cleans up oil discharge before it can cause significant damage.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, representing the Department of the Interior, was the lead settlement trustee for the culvert replacement project. Other trustees are Maine Department of Environmental Protection; Maine Department of Marine Resources; Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry; Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Significant funding for the upgrades also came from a Maine Stream Crossing Upgrade Grant, administered by the Maine DEP. The town of Charleston, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Maine Audubon also contributed money.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation oversaw the upgrades. Dirigo Timberlands handled construction in Charleston, while Eurovia was an active partner and completed the work in Hampden, according to a U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife news release.
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