ORRINGTON – Town leaders are replacing the deteriorating Meadow Dam with a new rock ramp fishway dam, which will allow fish to migrate up the Sedgeunkedunk Stream, and Cianbro Corp. is going to help.

As part of Cianbro’s project to change the Eastern Fine Paper Co. mill site into the Eastern Manufacturing Facility, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers required the Pittsfield construction company to do wetland work to offset the effects of constructing a bulkhead on the Penobscot River.

The company soon discovered the project at the Meadow Dam, which happens to be a former Eastern Fine hydroelectric dam. After discussing the idea with the town, the company decided to assist with demolition.

“We proposed that to the Army Corps and they agreed,” Tom Ruksznis, Cianbro project manager for site development in Brewer, said Thursday. “We’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do there yet because they’re in the designing phase.”

The company has pledged $67,735 in work for the project, which town selectmen approved at their meeting on Tuesday.

The dam will look like natural rapids created by a pile of brook rocks that will allow fish to pass, but will have a hidden solid dam wall underneath to regulate water levels.

“It seemed to be the perfect fit between the two of us,” Town Manager Carl Young said.

Soon after the town acquired the dam from Eastern Fine for nonpayment of taxes, officials learned it would cost an estimated $189,000 to repair. They then began working with state and federal organizations and agencies on alternatives for fixing or replacing it.

A local biologist for Aquatic Science Association Inc. in Brewer suggested the fishway dam as a way to restore the area to a more natural state and increase use by fish blocked by the man-made dams, including alewives and endangered Atlantic salmon.

The town hired Kleinschmidt Associates of Pittsfield, a firm that specializes in hydro dams, to design and engineer the new dam for a cost of $34,200 back in August. The fishway dam “will allow recreation [and] addresses fish passage and better water levels,” Young has said.

Within the next few months, a request for bids will be issued for the project, which will be done during the summer when the water levels are the lowest, Young said.

A number of agencies and groups, along with residents, have pitched in to get the project funded. The town is also searching out other federal and state grant funds in order to keep the costs to residents at a minimum, Young said.

“We are sure the assistance from Cianbro will have a significant impact on the taxpayers,” he said.