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WORRIED ABOUT SWOLLEN POND, NEIGHBORS TARGET BEAVER DAMS

Caroline Louise Cole, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT. Boston Globe. Boston, Mass.: Oct 10, 2004.

A summer's worth of rainy weather has pushed water levels in Martins Pond up to near the point of flooding out the septic systems of lake shore homes, prompting North Readingresidents to ask for an emergency permit to break open two beaver dams on Martins Brook downstream, one over the line in Wilmington.

"The problem with breaching a beaver dam is that action itself will immediately cause the beavers to rebuild the dam, so breaching is at best a short-term solution," [Mary Trudeau] said. "And while I can understand that the people on Martins Pond are upset about their septic systems, I am not sure this one dam is the problem. The board's thinking is, why not try this solution first and see if it works?"

Martins Pond is located on the Andoverline near Route 28 and Route 125 and empties into Martins Brook, which winds on a southeasterly course through Wilmingtonand eventually into Reading. Many of the 300 homes that surround the lake were once summer camps that have been converted to year-round homes.

Copyright New York Times Company Oct 10, 2004

ELLSWORTH - A man responsible for blowing up a beaver dam Wednesday morning on Bucksport Road has attracted a lot of official attention but is not facing any criminal charges.

Glenn Crawford, owner of C&C Machine, said Thursday he hired a local blasting firm to stick a piece of dynamite in the dam, which is on a neighboring property, to blow it up. Water that backs up behind the dam contaminates a spring that supplies his business and three adjacent commercial properties with fresh water, Crawford said.

Though the blast initially alarmed neighbors and authorities, Crawford is not facing any charges, nor is he accused of committing any violations. Police at first received a trespassing complaint from one of the owners of the adjacent property but charges are not being pressed, according to Ellsworth police Lt. Harold Page.

Crawford, a Lamoine resident, said Thursday that since the explosion he and the owners of the neighboring property have agreed that a deeper culvert will be put under a fire road that borders the pond. The water then should drain out through the new culvert before it seeps into the freshwater spring, he said.

"It certainly created quite a bit of excitement," Crawford said of the blast. "I had more badges and suits down here than you could imagine."

Page said the blast opened up a 10-foot-wide hole in the dam.

"It blew parts of the dam out into [Route 1]," Page said. "They lost quite a bit of water out of the pond."

One of the neighboring property owners was working nearby with a backhoe and filled the hole back in after the explosion, he said.

John Cullen, an official with Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said Thursday that the state is not concerned about the blast from an environmental standpoint because the pond originally was man-made and because Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife regulates nuisance-beaver issues.

Crawford said he talked to a DIF&W warden before he had the dam blown up.

"We thought we had it all worked out," he said.

Attempts Thursday to contact DIF&W officials familiar with the incident were unsuccessful.

Crawford said he has had the dam blown up three previous times before the latest charge was detonated Wednesday.

"It's a constant problem," Crawford said of the animals. "They rebuild it within three days."

Ellsworth Code Enforcement Officer Tom Fullam said Thursday that local ordinances do not regulate blasting in the city. He said that he intends to bring up the issue soon with other Ellsworth officials.

"Anytime any blasting is going to take place, there should be a [local] permit for it," Fullam said.

The alewives have managed to make their way from the Bagaduce River up a human-made fish way over a dam and into Mill Pond, a small pond at the end of Walker Pond. The beaver dam, however, blocks the narrow passage that runs under Coastal Road into Walker Pond. Although some of the alewives have made it into Walker Pond, many still are gathering near the bridge, waiting for a chance to get through.

A report from the state fisheries commissioner, written in 1870, cites the small stream, which it said is special for its "remarkable breed of alewife."

The commissioner noted that a barrel would hold about 750 of the pygmy alewives, while the same barrel would hold about 400 normal- sized alewives.

Alewives are harvested for commercial use, usually under the eye of local communities that have been granted fishing rights to the fish by the Department of Marine Resources. Although some of the fish are smoked and sold for human consumption, most are used as bait in the spring by lobster fishermen. The adults and young provide a food source for fish, such as striped bass, salmon and eels; osprey, eagles, kingfishers and cormorants, and aquatic fur- bearing mammals.

Like other alewives, the smaller fish are anadromous, spending the majority of their lives at sea, but returning to freshwater rivers, streams or lakes to spawn. The Walker Pond alewives make their way from Penobscot Bay and up the Bagaduce River to the pond. The run begins early in May, depending on the temperature of the water, and continues anywhere from four to six weeks.

In recent years, the run of alewives has been down throughout the state, Squires said, and that has been true also of the Walker Pond run. Although the numbers are improving in some areas, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has prohibited fishing for alewives in the upper areas of the Bagaduce River, and recently, the Department of Marine Resources modified its regulations to ban fishing of the alewives upstream of the North Brooksville-Sedgwick bridge over Bagaduce Falls.

"Because it's a unique run, we wanted to offer it some protection," Squiers said.

"We didn't want to lose it."

The regulations, however, have little effect on the alewive's natural predators, and the fish's predicament has attracted the attention of eagles and osprey, which have congregated in the area to feed on the fish waiting to get into Walker Pond. It also has attracted the attention of local residents who have been visiting the area to watch the birds and the fish, which can be seen in the water near the bridge.

The problem of the beaver dam is not a new one. Crews from the Maine Department of Transportation went in earlier this year and removed a dam from under the bridge, and had the beaver who built it removed, according to Chris Woodward, the highway crew chief at the Sedgwick garage.

"We thought we'd taken care of it," Woodward said. "We cleared it out earlier this year. But another beaver has built it up in pretty good shape."

Last year, he said, a beaver built a dam that blocked the exit from Mill Pond down the fish way and a lot of fish died when they swam over the dam, he said.

"There was a heck of a fish kill there. There were hundreds of them went down over the dam," he said.

The fish are managing to find a way through the dam, according to Marine Patrol Officer Dale Sprowl. He was concerned when he visited the site this weekend, he said, because it appeared that the fish were trapped in the pond. A second visit, however, showed him that they were getting through.

Still, Sprowl said, the dam is a hindrance, and it would be good for the alewives to have a clear passage into Walker Pond.

Woodward said he will discuss the problem with officials from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, but plans to get a crew down to the bridge this week to remove the dam.

"Last year they took a hard hit; we want to make sure that doesn't happen again next year," he said.

The state is looking at ways to breathe new life into a 127-mile stretch of railroad track in eastern Maine that has been unused for more than a decade.

Abandoned in 1985 by Maine Central Railroad as being too costly to operate, the line connecting Brewer and Calais may make a comeback, potentially offering freight and passenger service, according to a state transportation official. Other possible uses include scrapping the railroad altogether and using the real estate for trails for snowmobiling, biking and walking.

"We're open to any suggestions," said Allan Bartlett of the Maine Department of Transportation. Later this month in Machias, the public will get a chance to offer solutions to what might be done with the rail line that has been in the public's hands and unused for nine years.

The years have not been good to the tracks, now overgrown with brush and grass. In some cases fill used to buttress the track has eroded away as beaver dams plugged waterways, sending water flowing over the tracks and fill. Outside Jonesboro, track ribbons were hanging in midair last summer after water washed away the fill underneath. As much as 100,000 yards of gravel and other materials will be needed to repair the damage done by a beaver dam, Bartlett said.

Repairs for the railroad tracks won't come cheap. To bring the entire length of track up to full capacity, allowing a maximum speed of 25 mph for freight trains, would cost $20 million.

Reducing speeds to 10 mph still would require an initial investment of $12 million to $15 million.

Railroad companies such as the Bangor & Aroostook have evaluated the project and found that any increased business through the line couldn't come near to offsetting the hefty initial investment.

"We don't see the traffic that would justify" such an investment, said Ben Coes, a spokesman for the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. But Coes said the B&A might be interested in handling any rail service traffic once the tracks are repaired.

BANGOR - A beaver dam in Penjajawoc Marsh has been breached for the second time this year. The most recent tampering, discovered Sunday afternoon, resulted in the summons of two women on civil and criminal charges.

Sgt. Doug Tibbetts of the Maine Warden Service said he went to the marsh Sunday afternoon to check the water levels after a report of water-level fluctuations he received last week.

Once at the marsh, Tibbetts said he found two women waist-deep in the stream with digging tools. Closer inspection revealed that a 20- foot section of the 500-foot-long dam had been damaged.

"The damage could be very devastating this time of year," Tibbetts said. Bird nests located downstream could be flooded, while birds and nests upstream from the dam could be exposed to predators because of receding water levels, he explained.

Lucille DeBeck, 52, of Newburgh and Linda Query, 57, of Bangor were charged with a civil violation of tampering with a beaver dam and a Class E criminal charge for failure to have a permit to destroy a beaver dam, according to Tibbetts.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection also could add charges after its inspection of the dam, he said.

The women each face up to one year in prison and up to $1,000 in fines on the criminal charge if convicted. Fines on the civil charge could cost between $100 and $500. DeBeck's and Query's initial court appearances are scheduled for Aug. 4.

Efforts made on Sunday to reach Query for comment were unsuccessful.

According to Valerie Carter, spokeswoman for Bangor Area Citizens Organized for Responsible Development, Query is a spokesperson for the Friends of Bangor Mall Area and DeBeck owns land near the Penjajawoc Marsh.

The marsh has been the center of a battle between the Friends of Bangor Mall Area, a group in favor of a developer's request for a permit to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on the site, and BACORD, which opposes it.

Last July, the same inactive beaver dam was breached, and the man- made channel drained much of the 350-acre marsh. The DEP investigated the incident and cited a nearby landowner with violating the Natural Resources Protection Act.

Last week, as the Maine Board of Environmental Protection refused to reconsider its denial of a state permit needed to build the Supercenter, 60 acres of the marsh's grassland was plowed for the cultivation of cow corn.

Carter said the damage to the beaver dam in the short term as a result of the breach would lead to a huge loss of wildlife but that the marsh could repair itself.

"This just points out the need for more protection of the marsh," said Carter. "Given the proper protection, the marsh will recover."

TRESCOTT - A burst beaver dam early Tuesday morning washed out part of the main artery to the coastal town of Lubec, forcing drivers to travel 35 miles out of their way to reach the community.

Heavy weekend rains may have caused the beaver dam in a small stream near the Trescott town line to give way. The resulting flood created havoc for area residents headed home Tuesday night along Route 189.

Maine Department of Transportation officials said the two-lane road is expected to remain closed until this afternoon.

The washout means travelers will be routed about 35 miles out of their way to Route 191, a scenic secondary road that travels through Cutler to Route 1.

While the beavers begin rebuilding their home, an DOT road crew will be busy repairing the road at a cost of more than $5,000.

"All this water came down and ran over the roadway," Bruce Mattson, DOT division engineer for Hancock and Washington counties, said Tuesday. "There was a 4-foot-diameter culvert underneath the road, and there was too much water for the culvert to handle, so [the water] went over the road and started washing [out] the road. And about an 18- or 20-foot section of the culvert washed into the woods."

Two or three feet of roadway has caved in, and about 100 feet of the shoulder was washed away, Mattson estimated.

Initially, state officials had hoped to keep one lane open, but safety considerations forced them to close it entirely.

"We have a crew out there and equipment ready to repair the road, but we're probably going to have to wait until the water goes down some more to do the necessary repair," Mattson said.

The state engineer said he was uncertain what might have caused the dam to burst, but suggested that weekend rains may have been a factor.

"In Hancock County, we got 21/2 to 3 inches of rainfall this weekend, so there was a lot of rain and water backed up behind these dams," he said. "A lot of times you get a beaver dam and you get millions of gallons of water stacked up behind it.

"It doesn't appear to be that much, but sometimes you've got these meadows and wetlands - they're just like a big
 sponge. That is their purpose, to contain the water over a big area, and if there is a breach in the dam, it doesn't take much to release a lot of water."

The engineer said beaver damscontinue to be a problem in the state but the state is prohibited from doing anything other than trapping the animals and relocating them.

"We generally try to get somebody to live-trap them, and then we relocate them up in the north woods somewhere," Mattson said.

"But these critters, they're busy as beavers, so to speak," he said with a chuckle. "You just can't stop them."

Mattson asked people to exercise caution, but he expects to have the road open to two-way traffic later today.

"Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, most of our streams flowed in their natural state, had relatively few beaver dams or impoundments, were relatively cool, and had lots of alders, trees or shrubs along their banks providing shade."

In addition, Brokaw points out, fur prices were high enough to make trapping attractive, and trappers generally kept beaver populations under control. That situation no longer exists, he said.

Brokaw said his research, along with reports from numerous area fishermen, prompted him to seek help on the issue from several colleagues at the DIF&W. Those co-workers - including a number of fisheries biologists and wildlife administrators Ken Elowe, Mark Stadler, and Gene Dumont, and regional wildlife biologist Tom Schaeffer - have paid off, he said.

Two significant policy changes that have resulted: Beaver trapping has been extended in the Down East region by six to eight weeks; and state Animal Damage Control agents lethally removed, rather live-trapped and relocated, a higher proportion of nuisance beaver.

Brokaw said he'd like to see the folks who support the Penobscot River Restoration Project similarly advocate an aggressive beaver- control program.

"Because a dam is a dam, whether it's a 25-foot-high concrete one operated by a power company, or a 5-foot-high stick-and-mud one operated by a beaver, the biological principles which play out upon removal are similar," he wrote.

"If the experts agree that it's a great idea to remove two dams on the lower Penobscot to assist in salmon recovery efforts on this river, then it should also be a grand idea to remove the beaver dams choking the tributaries to the Machias River to help the recovery efforts on this formerly productive river," Brokaw said.

HOULTON -- It is called the "beaver deceiver" and for towns like Oakfield, which so far this year has spent $8,000 trying to deal with beavers plugging up culverts with their dams, it could be the solution to an expensive problem.

The deceiver was designed and built by Skip Lisle, a wildlife biologist for the Penobscot Indian Nation in Old Town. After seeing numerous failed attempts to deal with beaver dams, Lisle decided to use the beaver's own natural instincts against it.

With the support of the Penobscot Nation, Lisle built 11 of his deceivers on tribal lands from the Argyle-Alton area up to Mattamiscontis. All of them have proven to be successful so far, he said.

Beavers have a strong drive to dam up moving water, especially if that water is in an area which can provide a good source of food. But many times the best place for a beaver to build a dam is a bad place for humans, for whom the resulting flooded fields and washed out roads are a major nuisance.

In the past, destruction of the dams was the common remedy. But that can be an endless and expensive enterprise. If the dam location is in a place that suits the beaver's needs, more than likely, they will return over and over again.

In recent years efforts have turned to coming up with ways that allow the beavers to stay put, but still keep water flowing. Lisle's beaver deceiver does that by using geometry, deep water and materials that can be obtained from most hardware stores.

Culvert openings provide ideal dam sites for beavers since they can easily construct their dams perpendicular to the flow of water across the culvert opening.

Lisle's beaver deceiver thwarts that because it is in the form of an acute triangle. The triangle shape prevents the beavers from building a dam against it because it is pointed and the water is made to flow parallel to it.

Beavers also like to build their dams in shallow water. If the water is already two or three feet deep, the beavers are less likely to build a dam at the site.

A beaver deceiver built in an area prone to beaver dams will make the water deep enough to discourage beavers, but still allow water to flow easily through the culvert.

Constructed of heavy-gauge fencing, cedar poles and horizontal, pressure-treated brace boards, Lyle said the deceiver is simple to construct and takes two people about a half day to set up. The average cost is about $200, including labor.

In the fall issue of Maine Fish and Wildlife magazine, he outlined the installation process.

In areas where beaver have already built a dam across a culvert, the first step is to draw down the water level at the site to facilitate building the deceiver. This usually involves clearing out the culvert, but not necessarily removing the entire dam.

Three cedar posts are then driven into the stream bed in the shape of an acute triangle and then strengthened with horizontal brace boards. Next, wire fencing of at least 12.5 gauge is tacked to the posts and braces. Lisle estimated that the length of the long sides of the triangle are about 10 feet.

Finally, the water level should be raised back up over the fencing. That can be accomplished by attaching boards between two of the cedar poles. This part of the operation essentially makes the water flow parallel to the deceiver, making it hard for the beavers to build their dam. It also restores the beaver pond with minimal environmental damage.

Lisle said that if the devices are built strong enough to withstand such things as winter ice, they should last several years.

"They're smart," Lisle said of the beavers. "But as determined and hard working as they are, they're not as smart as us. If we can't outsmart them, we'd better give up."

Inmates from the Down East Correctional Facility are removing abandoned beaver dams to help the migration of Atlantic salmon on three Washington County rivers.

Using long-handled forks, the inmates are dismantling dams on the Machias, Narraguagus and Pleasant rivers. Those are among seven Maine rivers that fisheries experts believe are home to most of the last wild runs of Atlantic salmon in the United States.

"We're looking at getting as much cold water into the rivers as we can," said Mike Hill, the New England director of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. "The bottom line is opening up salmon habitat."

This summer's drought has caused river levels to drop, leaving water temperatures 10 degrees above the 58 degrees that salmon find comfortable, Hill said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service are expected to decide in November whether the salmon should be placed on the federal list of endangered species.

Maine is proceeding with a 1997 Atlantic salmon conservation plan, which includes removal of beaver damsthat interfere with river flows and block salmon from swimming to upstream spawning grounds.

Most of the dams the inmates are removing are inactive, Hill said. Removing a working beaver dam is tricky because the industrious critters can rebuild them almost overnight, he said. Breaching a working beaver damalso requires permission from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Unlike Atlantic salmon populations, which have dwindled to an estimated 100 in the seven rivers, beavers are plentiful in Washington County.

A game warden took heroic measures late Saturday night when he stripped off his clothing and swam across a rain-swollen river to comfort an injured hunter, who had become lost in an area off Route 9 near Beddington.

Warden Sgt. Tim Peabody stayed with 38-year-old Leroy Day, who had injured his ankle, and kept the man company until other wardens could reach him, according to Paul Reynolds, spokesman for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Reynolds said Day had been hunting with friends in Township 22 near the Starvation Branch of the Union River. He said Day apparently walked across a beaver dam, got turned around and couldn't find his way back across the river. Reynolds said Day was not dressed for the wet conditions that occurred later in the day and had injured his ankle.

ORRINGTON - A large beaver dam in the south part of town let go early Wednesday, releasing a torrent of water that washed out a half- mile stretch of Swetts Pond Road and created a gully at least 10 feet deep at the entrance of Cemetery Road.

The raging water also temporarily submerged a section of Route 15, closing it for several hours, and washed away a section of the Springfield Terminal railroad bed before making its way into the Penobscot River.

The disaster resulted in as much as $1.5 million in damage, according to Town Manager Dexter Johnson. As of midafternoon, he said, portions of the road were cleared and made temporarily passable for emergency vehicles, though it will be rough going until the road can be rebuilt. "We don't have a million and a half bucks just sitting around here," Johnson said.

The beaver dam, located in a largely undeveloped area between the Swetts Pond and Hoxie Hill roads, reportedly let go about 5 a.m., sending torrents of water downhill. Town maps created in the 1970s show the pond created by the dam to be between 15 and 20 acres in area, though locals and others familiar with the area estimate it could be three times that size.

Three households - two on the lower end of the Swetts Pond Road and one on the Cemetery Road, were left virtually landlocked. Deep chasms were left where driveways and culverts once were.

While no one was stranded or injured and no homes were destroyed, it could be some time before residents can leave their properties with their vehicles.

Dick Harriman, the town's tax assessor and code enforcement officer, said Johnson, selectmen, municipal staffers and engineers spent much of the early part of the day in emergency meetings and working with state and federal officials to develop a strategy for repairing the road.

Harriman said the repair work will be costly. "We're talking major reconstruction," he said. Town officials also are working on a temporary fix that would enable affected residents to use their temporarily stranded vehicles.

According to longtime residents, Wednesday's beaver dam failure marked the second time in recent history that Swetts Pond Road, freshly repaved last summer at an estimated cost of $30,000, has washed out.

"Back in 1954 or '55, we had a hurricane come through that washed out that road," Gilbert Betts, 75, said. "It's surprising how far [the water contained by the dam] came down."

According to Betts, who lives on the river side of Route 15 not far from Swetts Pond Road, some in the neighborhood heard what "sounded like a big jet plane" whooshing by when the dam let loose what he estimated to be 50 or 60 acres of dammed water.

Measurements taken Wednesday morning showed that a 1,300-foot stretch of Swetts Pond Road was completely washed away, and as much as half a mile of the road was badly eroded.

The water carved a large gully, which the town manager said was 20 to 30 feet deep and about 40 yards across, at the entrance of Cemetery Road, cutting a cemetery and one residence off from Swetts Pond Road. Even larger trenches and gullies were seen on lower Swetts Pond Road, which took the brunt of the damage.

Why the dam let go remained unclear Wednesday. Though several theories abounded, most agreed that it was unusual for a beaver dam to fail, unless there were no beavers around to maintain it. Harriman said he had been told that beavers hadn't been at the dam for the last six months. Some speculated that the beavers that once lived at the dam had been trapped or relocated, while others maintained the beavers had left for lack of food.

"Beavers are better engineers than many people who've gone to college," said Craig Kosobud, a state Department of Transportation crew supervisor assigned to the area.

According to Kosobud, Route 15 was not damaged in the deluge, though it was submerged under as much as 5 to 6 feet of water during the peak of the flood. His estimate was based in part on watermarks left on road signs in the affected area.

Route 15 was closed from the time of the flooding to about 10 a.m., after the water had abated and DOT workers and Orrington volunteer firefighters had had a chance to clean the highway of debris and silt.

According to Cynthia Scarano of Guilford Rail System in North Billerica, Mass., which owns the affected track, rail service between Brewer and Bucksport was expected to be restored Wednesday afternoon or evening. Damage to the railroad track was minimal, with about a 100-foot long stretch of rail bed washed out, but the track itself was intact. The Springfield Terminal track between Bucksport and Brewer typically is used for two trips a day.

TRESCOTT - The main road into Lubec reopened Wednesday afternoon with little fanfare, easing the way for residents who had to detour about 35 miles the day before to get home.

Sometime Tuesday, a beaver dam gave way about 1,000 feet upstream on the East Stream, flooding Route 189 and washing out part of the highway. The flood interrupted traffic flow into Lubec for more than 24 hours.

Initially, state officials had hoped to keep one lane open, but safety considerations forced them to close it entirely.

State Department of Transportation officials had expected that the two-lane road would be closed until around 4 p.m. Wednesday, but the road crew was able to reopen the road three hours earlier.

Heavy weekend rains may have caused the beaver dam to burst.

Although DOT officials had projected the repair to cost around $5,000, Bruce Mattson, DOT division engineer for Hancock and Washington counties, said Wednesday that the cost probably would be as much as $15,000.

After the dam gave way, water washed over the road and a few feet of roadway caved in, and about 100 feet of the shoulder washed away. "We had to replace the entire 4-foot culvert," Mattson said. "It turned out that [with] the existing culvert, half of it washed away and the other half was starting to rust a little bit. So we thought it best to replace the whole culvert."

He said beaver dams continue to be a problem, but the state is prohibited from doing anything other than trapping and relocating the animals. Mattson said members of the road crew found two more beaver damsupstream from the one that gave way.

Mattson said "it almost takes an excavator" to remove a beaver dam because of the mud and sticks. "And they are always repairing them. If there is a little purge in the dam, they are always there to pack a little more mud or sticks in there."

This time, he said, the road crew might put stones near the culvert to help protect it.

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