Discussing the Allagash waterway in plain English

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“[T]here can be no room for misunderstanding… [T]he key issue on the Allagash is … preservation … [which] must be in perpetuity.”

– Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, 1964

Susan Young’s otherwise accurate piece “Allagash: accessible or wild?” (BDN, Jan. 13-14) incorrectly characterizes me as “heading” a group asking the Maine Department of Conservation (DOC) to obey the 1968 National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (the Act). In fact I am just a peasant with a pitchfork, another independent volunteer advising the actual leaders.

The article correctly identifies me as president of Friends of Acadia, but leaves readers to infer that Friends is involved in the Allagash. To be clear: Friends has no role in the Allagash, or in “the” national park, a locution that these days conjures the North Woods proposal.

Some background:

In 1966, the Maine Legislature passed the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Act, and citizens voted a $1.5-million bond. Both measures stated this objective: develop “maximum wilderness character.”

In 1972, the Attorney General’s Office wrote DOC: “The whole purpose of the [statute] is to preserve the Waterway as a wilderness area. Public roads would obviously be inconsistent with that purpose.”

Gov. Kenneth Curtis and DOC sought and received a federal Wild designation in 1970. DOC agreed to limit road accesses to two or three, prohibit public use of private roads, keep certain development 1/4 mile from riverbanks, restrict future dams. The Governor, in good faith, guaranteed “permanent administration as a Wild River Area” – i.e., forever.

By 2001, DOC had allowed 14 accesses, a 700 percent expansion, and 16 parking lots, reducing the Allagash from Wild (“generally inaccessible except by trail … essentially primitive”) to Recreational (“readily accessible by road”), an illegal demotion.

The 92.5 miles of Wild Allagash amount to 3/10 percent of Maine’s catalogued 31,806 river miles.

DOC wishes you to believe that preserving that minuscule mileage threatens access to the other 31,713 miles.

In 1964, Sen. Edmund S. Muskie wrote: “[M]y answers … have been distorted… . It is important to reiterate my position so there can be no room for misunderstanding. … T]he key issue … is the preservation of the riverway . . . in a primitive and . . . unspoiled forest area. [S]uch preservation must be in perpetuity….[T]he burden is on the State to … truly insure preservation of the area in perpetuity.”

He labeled DOC’s proposal “weak” for offering no permanent protection. So, in 1965, he devised a “compromise of Federal-State differences” that would add “State designated and administered wild river areas” to the national system.

A Governor’s recommendations and a plan would assure the President and Congress that the Act’s purposes would be “effected in perpetuity.” Muskie’s compromise was incorporated, and Maine became, in 1970, the first state to have a federally protected, state managed forever-wild river.

At DOC’s request, the Interior Secretary grandfathered the timber-crib dam at Churchill, for its “historic significance.” It had been rebuilt in 1968 but bespoke the logging era motif. DOC demolished it in 1997 and erected a modern concrete dam. It was not grandfathered and has no “historic significance.”

It subverts the Act’s Congressional purpose: to complement willy-nilly damming with a policy of preserving “selected rivers” dam-free or with innocuous, conforming dams.

DOC failed to obtain a federal permit to build the 1997 dam. That omission invalidated DOC’s LURC permit. The Army Corps of Engineers failed the Act’s mandate to consult the National Park Service about the dam. DOC is illegally operating an illegal dam. Similar private-sector violations can bring fines of $35,000 a day, a hypothetical $50-million risk to Mainers.

I voted for a new dam in 1997 but wrongly assumed DOC would hew to the Act, follow the Clean Water Act’s permit requirements, and secure a valid LURC license.

DOC characterizes the illegal $1.4-million dam as “an unfortunate situation.” The Legislature has been silent. LURC has denied requests for a hearing on who is accountable.

DOC should: 1) admit breaking federal law; 2) obey the rivers Act, federal guidelines, and commitments DOC agreed to; 3) restore the legal Wild conditions by reducing road accesses and parking; 4) refurbish Churchill Dam to historic specifications, remove unnecessary administrative buildings, revegetate the site.

Until DOC agrees in writing and the National Park Service signs off, the Corps should withhold a permit.

(You can comment until Feb. 9: Jay L. Clement, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Maine Project Office, 675 Western Ave., Manchester 04531 ay.l.clement@usace.army.mil), with a copy to Jamie Fosburgh, National Park Service, 15 State Street, Boston, Mass. 02109 (jamie_fosburgh@nps.gov) – ask NPS to make a site visit.)

DOC’s maladministration follows an unfortunate model in conservation history. Citizens first entrust an agency to protect a rarity but later must save it from its sworn protectors. On the Allagash, a state statute, a state bond, an attorney general’s opinion, two federal acts, a governor’s pledge, a Senator’s compromise, and permanent commitments by DOC itself prove insufficient to reverse its anti-stewardship behaviors.

And plain-language directives have snapped no synapses within DOC: “maximum wilderness character,” “generally inaccessible,” “no motorized overland travel within 1/4 mile,” “public roads obviously inconsistent,” “private roads closed to public use,” “future dams restricted,” “shorelines essentially primitive,” “permanently administered as wild,” “effected in perpetuity,”… and Sen. Muskie’s “no room for misunderstanding.”

What doesn’t DOC understand?

Confronted with facts, DOC floats soothing phrases – “an unfortunate situation” and naked evasions. The spinnings and intractable defenses of indefensible law-breakings further diminish public trust that DOC will protect Maine’s only Wild river, a paltry three-tenths of 1 percent of Maine’s riverine heritage.

That is DOC’s Allagash legacy. Of this, there can be no room for misunderstanding.

Ken Olson, a Bass Harbor resident, is a former lecturer in conservation at Yale College and Wesleyan University and author of the monograph Natural Rivers and the Public Trust.