AUGUSTA – A proposal to bring sea-run alewives back to the upper St. Croix River could threaten the river’s $5 million smallmouth bass fishery, the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee was told Monday. At issue was LD 365, sponsored by Rep. Ken Honey, R-Boothbay, to open the Woodland Dam and the Grand Falls Dam to allow the upriver passage of sea-run alewives.

The argument over the migration of the alewife has gone on for years on both sides of the river, which forms the border between the United States and Canada. In 1995, the Maine Legislature authorized closing river dams to the migrating fish after fishing guides said alewives were responsible for the upriver decline in the number of smallmouth bass.

More than 100 people attended the Monday hearing that pitted state agencies and conservation groups against area fishermen and guides.

The 1995 dam closures have dropped the number of migrating alewives from 2.6 million in 1987 to fewer than 9,000 in the year 2000, according to the commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, George D. Lapointe. He said the alewife is an important food supply for striped bass, eagles, ospreys, herons, kingfishers and resident freshwater game species. The commissioner supported the recommendations of the St. Croix River Steering Committee, which supported opening the dams with close monitoring of both the alewife and the smallmouth bass populations.

The bass and the alewife coexisted in the river for 100 years, according to Pat Keliher, the executive director of the 1,200-member Coastal Conservation Association. “If Mother Nature is allowed to continue her job, they will coexist for 100 more,” he said. Keliher said the decline in smallmouth bass upriver and in Spednick Lake was caused by decreased water levels, not the presence of alewives. Hydropower projects have lowered the lake by 14 feet, he said.

Many CCA members fish the St. Croix and don’t want to jeopardize any fish species, Keliher said. The removal of the alewife has forced predators including pickerel, bass and perch to feed more heavily on other species including smelt, trout, landlocked salmon and Atlantic salmon. The organization could find no scientific evidence that alewives eat young sport fish or carry a viral disease which threatens other species, as argued by area guides, he said.

During the Monday hearing, 11 people spoke in favor of the bill and 20, including many fishing guides, spoke against it.

Norman E. Trask, legislative liaison for the 700-member Maine Professional Guides Association, asked the committee to postpone opening the dams until adequate biological information can be developed. He reminded committee members that the Legislature passed emergency legislation in 1997 to ban alewife stocking in Oxford and Androscoggin counties because the species proved “devastating” to lake fish.

Fishways were built in 1965 to allow upriver migration and “by the mid-1980s, the Spednick Lake bass fishery, one of the finest in the country, had been devastated,” Trask said.

Robert Upham of Grand Lake Stream, who has been fishing the area for 22 years, said opening the upriver area to sea-run alewives “invites disruption and the protracted diminishment of one of Maine’s most valuable sports fisheries.” William Randall of East Winthrop warned that the damage from inappropriate stocking is irreversible and “darn serious business.”

Both the St. Croix International Waterway Commission and the Georgia-Pacific Corp., owners of the two dams, took a neutral stance on the bill.

No date has been set for a work session.