The Colby Echo

Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Local News

The planned removal of the Fort Halifax Dam has been delayed again after appearing finalized.

Sitting on the Sebasticook River, the 100-year-old Fort Halifax Dam would seem like any other dam to most observers. But the Fort Halifax Dam is now the center of what has turned out to be a very controversial issue.

A 1998 agreement required that the energy company running the Fort Halifax Dam build some sort of fish passage. FPL Energy, which runs the dam, decided that it would make more financial sense to remove, or breach, the dam rather than build the fish lift. A study on whether the breach should be allowed was conducted by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which approved the plan. But this was just the beginning of the battle over the future of the Fort Halifax Dam.

In August 2006, Save Our Sebasticook (SOS), a group founded to try and save the Fort Halifax Dam, appealed the DEP decision to Maine's Superior Court. The judge quickly ruled against SOS writing that "Obviously, SOS does not agree with the analysis (of DEP), but that does not make the decisions arbitrary or capricious, nor is the board's final decision characterized by an abuse of discretion."

State Representative and SOS leader Ken Fletcher (R-Winslow) disagreed.

"I think it is particularly ironic that the DEP is leading the charge in ignoring renewable energy," he told the Morning Sentinel, "... The DEP principally gave lip service, and did not do the analysis required by law."

After SOS's appeal was rejected by the Maine Supreme Court, it seemed that the end was near for the Dam, but March of 2007 saw a new twist in the fight over the future of the Fort Halifax Dam. While FPL Energy estimated the fish lift would cost between $3 and $4 million to build, Essex Hydro thought that it would cost less than $3 million and attempted to take over the dam.

Unfortunately for Essex Hydro and the members of SOS, the Kennebec Coalition, which includes the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, and other groups, found what in its opinion were substantial flaws in the Essex proposal and opposed it. Being a part of the 1998 agreement, the Kennebec Coalition was an important voice and the Essex bid to acquire the dam was eventually denied.

The removal of the dam passed one more hurdle when the Winslow Planning Board agreed to let FPL Energy go ahead with the breach as planned in February 2008. Yet just when it appeared the fight over the future of the Fort Halifax Dam was coming to a close, Fletcher and another citizen of Winslow filed two more appeals in early April.

Fletcher and his group of 38 residents argue in their appeal that the Board did not uphold the shoreline zoning ordinance. He and the group of signatories called on FPL Energy to submit a more detailed dam removal plan. His concern is that the dam's removal could cause the unstable riverbank to badly erode and cause some houses that sit on the riverbank to be in danger.
While many saw this as a last ditch attempt to slow down the removal by Fletcher, Town Manager Michael Heavener acknowledged, "Obviously they have a right to appeal. That's part of the process."

The other appeal, sent in by Winslow resident Jane Edwards, voiced concern about the public health risk caused by chromium in the sediment. Edwards wants the DEP to conduct a more thorough study to examine the health effects of removing the dam.

Although the end of the Fort Halifax Dam seems inevitable at this point, the timing of it remains up in the air.

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