More on the Basin Mills project

The letter from Kirk Ramsay on March 29 about the Basin Mills dam deserves further comment.

I agree with him on two points; we must look at the big picture, and wse must examine other viable sources of electricity. Our society is incredibly wasteful, not merely of energy, but of all resources. It is high time we looked to different, and better, ways of doing things.

But damming a river is not a way to obtain “clean” energy. It is destructive of the environment upon which many species of life depend. The restoration of Atlantic salmon is an attempt to undo some of the damage done in the past by man’s greed and carelessness. After being almost totally exterminated in the Penobscot River by dams and pollution, Atlantic salmon are making a comeback because the State of Maine and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have made a commitment to try to restore the fish, a symbol of a clean environment as significant as the bald eagle.

More than 90 percent of all the Atlantic salmon which return to rivers in the United States come back to the Penobscot River!

The position of the Atlantic Salmon Federation and American Rivers and all other environmental groups which oppose the Basin Mills dam is that other means of generating or conserving electricity should be explored in full detail before trying to dam the river. Fish cannot choose where they live; if they don’t have access to spawning areas, their race will die out, as it nearly did before.

But human beings can choose. We can choose to use less energy, or use it more efficiently, or generate it in a different way. Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. has the poorest record of promoting energy efficiency and conservation of any public utility in New England. In our opinion, it could find many more than 46 megawatts by instituting conservation and efficiency measures in its existing system. This proposition will be tested fully in the pending proceedings before the Maine Public Utilities Commission, in which we are intervenors, and will present expert testimony on this issue. Clinton B. Townsend President, Maine Council Atlantic Salmon Federation, Skowhegan

Kirk Ramsay took the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation and American Rivers to task for objecting to the proposal of Bangor Hydro to build a new hydro-electric dam at Basin Mills on the Penobscot River. Ramsay’s agrument is that hydro power is “cleaner” than other power alternatives.

Those of us concerned with Atlantic salmon note that 86 percent of the entire stock of this species produced in the United States returns to the Penobscot River, as noted in Tom Hennessey’s column of April 4. The Basin Mills proposed project will make continuation of the runs on the Penobscot highly questionable. One concludes that more than three-quarters of our salmon production is threatened by Basin Mills.

There is no evidence that Bangor Hydro has seriously explored conservation of energy as a means of meeting new energy demand. And, conservation is the “cleanest” of all sources of energy. John B. Diamond Orono