BACK UP THE RIVER

A board reviewing the state of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway for the last three years probably will not benefit significantly from delaying construction of canoe access at John’s Bridge and once again reviewing overall access on the waterway. Members of the advisory council have made their positions clear and, absent new and substantial information, are unlikely to change them. But if the governor really wants to be helpful, he might provide information that would be both new and unusually substantial: a narrative of the recent history of the waterway, assembled by a thoroughly neutral party.

The Allagash is 92 miles long and there is a different version of events for every mile of it. Either the river has always had dozens of access points, official and unofficial, or only two were recognized when the river Gov. Ken Curtis in 1970 applied for the waterway to be designated and protected as a wild river area under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Either Maine agreed to meet certain federal regulations in accepting money from Washington for the waterway or it never signed anything. Either the area is supposed to be managed to maximize wilderness or it must insure that local residents are not denied use. The advisory council has had difficulty coming to agreement on how Allagash management should go forward because there is not agreement on where it has been.

With help from the state Department of Conservation and the several intensely interested private parties that watch over the Allagash, a neutral – out of state? – research group could assemble the available background information. It could also interview the people who were there 30 years ago and who wrote agreements or obtained funding for the waterway. It could put together a document which, if accepted by the governor’s office, could stand as the official history of the river, at least as it pertains to the time after about 1950. This history would stand as the authoritative record by which to prove a point or disprove an opponent’s.

Such a study would, of course, be imperfect. If it were excellent work, the imperfections would be small and would not measurably affect the narrative. If it were persuasive work, it would allow the council to stop debating what did or did not happen 30 years ago and more profitably look to what ought to happen now under the conditions to which Maine actually agreed. A research project of this scale would take time, but it beats more debate about issues for which deep disagreement and little movement.