MAINE - Life in the Slow Lane
I hope this removal helps but I wonder if the salmon in that river are a lost cause? With record high water temps and lack of wild salmon now I don't see this removal helping as much as people would like. The rerason the Canadians sill have great fisheries is because the didn't restrict the wild fish from there native spawning grounds for a hundred years. I just hate to think that we have a renewable clean energy source that will be gone and could have had a fish ladder installed for allowing the sea run fish to move further up river to the spawning grounds. I have been on both sides of this debate and still can't make my mind up. I do lean twords keeping it but it is too late. I just hope in ten years I don't have to say I told you so.
Jake do ladders really work ? I have seen them installed on other rivers but they dont really work as well as they were entended. . As a clean energy source there are plenty of other ways to obtain clean energy .Now as far as the Salmon I agree it might be to late for them but mother nature will be the one who will let us know for sure.
Dave V
Quote by: Dave+VJake do ladders really work ? I have seen them installed on other rivers but they dont really work as well as they were entended.
I know that the EO fishway allowed fish to pass from the lake to the river and vice versa and lots of fish used it. I know of fish elevator on the kennebec at the Hathaway dam that allows thousands of fish through daily so I would say yah they do work if designed properly that is the key. It has to be fish friendly but it can and does work. Also the fish elevator allows them to be selective on what goes up and what goes back down. For instance there is a chance that there are pike in that streach of river that would not be alowed over if it happened into the elevator. Unlikely but could happen. Alfwives were lifted over the dam in the tens of thousands during the spring along with a few rainbows and browns.
Jake
Thanks Jake for the info. Were ladders proposed on the Halifax Dam
Yes they were but the FPL decommisioned the dam so it wasn't going to produce power any more for that company. They would have had to sell the dam to someone else and since there was a lot of controvesy over the dam they couldn't get a buyer. I hope to go down in a few weeks to check out the new landscape, I will take some pics and post them up.
Thanks Jake
I think the Halifax dam was going to have to go no matter what. It produced so little power it was totally uneconomicly useful that it had to go.
Lee
I would have to say a dam 100 years old might have needed an update to make it worth while to put a ladder in . I wonder what the cost difference was ?
I wouldnt think it would be either but I think the home owners are a bit nervous
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was
cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.
On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words,
and some of the words are theirs.