First Dam on Cobbosseecontee Stream, Gardiner, Maine. June, 1998.
Cobbosseecontee Stream is the largest Kennebec River tributary below the
river's head of tide, entering the Kennebec at the City of Gardiner. The
stream has a natural drop of 125 feet in its last two miles, which made
it an ideal site for early hydro-mechanical power. In the 1800s, at least
8 dams crossed the stream in its last two miles. Today, only three are left.
The lowermost, the Gardiner Paperboard Dam, is shown above. The dam blocks
access to more than a dozen fish species, including Atlantic salmon, American
shad, alewives, blueback herring, sea-run brown trout and American eel.
Friends of the Kennebec Salmon has worked since 1998 in a cooperative fashion
with the dam's owner, Gardiner Paperboard, to raise funds and develop plan
to breach the dam and restore 1.3 miles of lower Cobbossee Stream to its
free-flowing condition. Because the mill takes water for its operations
from the dam's head pond, ensuring the mill's water intake will function
without the dam is a critical precondition to breaching the dam. See
below.
Do you have engineering expertise in designing in-stream water intakes
for a very small paper mill ???
If so, please let us know.
Cobbossee Stream, Gardiner
Cobbossee Stream, from Bridge Street, downtown Gardiner, Maine.
Is this wild Atlantic salmon river worth protecting and restoring?
Or is it too ugly and degraded to care about?
Opinions differ. What is yours? Let us know.
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