Specialist blames logging for Sunday River woes

NEWRY – Logging is to blame for the destabilization of the lower Sunday River, according to a Canadian river specialist.

Over the years, transporting logs down the river caused damage because it required building small dams to maintain a minimum depth, John D. Parish wrote in a draft report on the river’s problems. Timber harvesting in the past 15 years above the Ouwinga Camp in Riley Township may have accelerated the problems.

“It is readily apparent that the Sunday River, from the Androscoggin River to upstream of the Ouwinga Camp, is experiencing some dramatic adjustments,” Parish said.

The river’s deep fishing pools have disappeared and the river is wider than it was in the early 1980s. The changes have become more dramatic in recent years and have started to affect land along the river’s shores and the fish habitat.

Aerial photos from 1943 and 1999 show the river has changed its course. Those changes have eroded and transported substantial quantities of glacial soils and cobblestones downstream, Parish said.

Within a span of three years, the river carved a 1,400-foot channel through land owned by the parents of Randy Harrington.

“I’d never seen a river change direction like that,” said district conservationist Peter Marcinuk of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, who visited the river last month.