Lower temperatures ease ice jam pressures

ALLAGASH – Cool weather has eased the water and ice pressure on rivers in northern Maine, and officials believed Wednesday that nothing may happen, at least until the weather warms up.

At Allagash, the town has been living with a 6- to 8-mile-long ice jam from Cross Rock at Allagash west to Big Rapids since December. Ice on the stretch of river has been estimated at 20-30 feet thick.

Ice from the upper reaches of the St. John River had been adding to the roiling mass of water and ice all week, but that eased Wednesday.

Officials were thinking of toning things down at their command center at the Allagash Town Office until the weather warms up.

It was much the same at Fort Fairfield, where Aroostook River levels dropped 1 foot overnight and an ice jam moved downriver, easing the pressure on the bridge crossing the river there.

Several homes on Riverside Street in Fort Fairfield are still cut off because of water and ice. An alternate route was created for most of the homeowners, but Gerard Martin was still unable to live in his house that remained surrounded by ice and water.

“Hopefully we will continue the cold weather for 48 hours,” Roy Gardner, first selectman at Allagash, said Wednesday afternoon. “The water has dropped about a foot at the head of the ice jam at Big Rapids, and the pressure is easing. “Things don’t look quite so bad today,” Gardner said.

“We think we will crank things down for a few days because we don’t see that anything will happen,” he said. “Probably nothing will happen until Saturday, when it warms up.”

Gardner said a flight over the St. John River Wednesday showed an ice jam still in place at Seven Islands on the upper St. John River as well as at the confluence of the Big Black River.

A jam at the St. Francis-St. John town line remained in place, but no homes were threatened. There is also a jam at Grand Isle, and that is held in place by 20 miles of ice covering the head pond of a hydroelectric dam at Grand Falls, New Brunswick.

Hundreds of acres of agricultural and forestland were underwater on the low-lying plains along the St. John River.

Three camps remain underwater at Allagash.

At Fort Fairfield, Fire Chief Paul Durepo said the river had dropped overnight and eased some of the pressure.

Wednesday was the sixth day that the town was under pressure from the jam, which stretches from the Aroostook River Bridge in Fort Fairfield to the Tinker Dam at the Maine-New Brunswick border.

The town has closed Riverside Avenue and Russell Road. The North Caribou Road, also known as the Grimes Road, has been sporadically closed and open. Monday afternoon it was open.

The Aroostook River Bridge has been closed to traffic three times since Friday, when ice and water was pushing against it.