Leave it to beavers: Burst dam washes out road

TRESCOTT – A burst beaver dam early Tuesday morning washed out part of the main artery to the coastal town of Lubec, forcing drivers to travel 35 miles out of their way to reach the community.

Heavy weekend rains may have caused the beaver dam in a small stream near the Trescott town line to give way. The resulting flood created havoc for area residents headed home Tuesday night along Route 189.

Maine Department of Transportation officials said the two-lane road is expected to remain closed until this afternoon.

The washout means travelers will be routed about 35 miles out of their way to Route 191, a scenic secondary road that travels through Cutler to Route 1.

While the beavers begin rebuilding their home, an DOT road crew will be busy repairing the road at a cost of more than $5,000.

“All this water came down and ran over the roadway,” Bruce Mattson, DOT division engineer for Hancock and Washington counties, said Tuesday. “There was a 4-foot-diameter culvert underneath the road, and there was too much water for the culvert to handle, so [the water] went over the road and started washing [out] the road. And about an 18- or 20-foot section of the culvert washed into the woods.”

Two or three feet of roadway has caved in, and about 100 feet of the shoulder was washed away, Mattson estimated.

Initially, state officials had hoped to keep one lane open, but safety considerations forced them to close it entirely.

“We have a crew out there and equipment ready to repair the road, but we’re probably going to have to wait until the water goes down some more to do the necessary repair,” Mattson said.

The state engineer said he was uncertain what might have caused the dam to burst, but suggested that weekend rains may have been a factor.

“In Hancock County, we got 21/2 to 3 inches of rainfall this weekend, so there was a lot of rain and water backed up behind these dams,” he said. “A lot of times you get a beaver dam and you get millions of gallons of water stacked up behind it.

“It doesn’t appear to be that much, but sometimes you’ve got these meadows and wetlands – they’re just like a big sponge. That is their purpose, to contain the water over a big area, and if there is a breach in the dam, it doesn’t take much to release a lot of water.”

The engineer said beaver dams continue to be a problem in the state but the state is prohibited from doing anything other than trapping the animals and relocating them.

“We generally try to get somebody to live-trap them, and then we relocate them up in the north woods somewhere,” Mattson said.

“But these critters, they’re busy as beavers, so to speak,” he said with a chuckle. “You just can’t stop them.”

Mattson asked people to exercise caution, but he expects to have the road open to two-way traffic later today.