July 17, 2008
Several months ago, we wrote about the controversy surrounding plans to remove the Fort Halifax Dam on the Sebasticook River in Winslow. Dam owner FPL Energy, faced with the choice of building a fish passage or removing the dam, chose removal as the less expensive option. Residents on the impoundment above the dam, led by Kenneth Fletcher, challenged the plan in a seemingly endless series of regulatory and legal appeals.
Now, seven years of debate are ending with the dam’s demolition. The last appeal ran out last month, and on Tuesday FPL spokesman F. Allen Wiley told the Portland Press Herald that a slow but steady drawdown of the reservoir began about two weeks ago. Today demolition crews began breaching the dam, setting the stage for a final draining of the impoundment over the next week. The entire dam will be removed by the end of the month if all goes according to plan, opening the entire Sebasticook watershed to the sea-run fish species — from alewives to salmon — that once filled its waters for the first time in more than a century.
Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008 in Permalink
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