Anglers Oppose Dam at Scribner's Mill

SEBAGO LAKE – The Sebago Lake Angler's Association (SLAA) has voted to oppose the building of a dam at Scribner's Mill on Crooked River last week, a vote that SLAA says will help to ensure better fish runs and a healthier watershed.

“We took a vote,” said SLAA President David Garcia. “It was almost unanimous. The group does not want to see any dams put in on Crooked River.”

The group's position on the issue is no surprise.

“We opposed the dam at Scribner's Mills because over a long period of years, we've been trying to take all the dams out of the crooked river to restore the natural spawning grounds of salmon,” said SLAA President David Garcia.

This is the third time that Scribner's Mill Inc., a not-for-profit company, has attempted to build a dam on the site, which would be used to power a historically authentic working mill for six months out of the year.

SLAA officials say that building a dam would be a step backward, to less-enlightened times.

“They stopped the log drives in the 1970s because of the decaying of logs and bark,” said Garcia. “All of that decaying bark created gases which polluted the water, which was not conducive for trout species, and it cleaned them out.”

Garcia said that the group doesn't want to lose progress that has been made in restoring the watershed.

“It's so much of a slap in the face to us,” said Garcia. “This is like a throwback to the fifties and sixties.”

“Why would you want to put a discharge of bark and wood in the river today?” he asked.

Scott Hatch, a representative for Scribner's Mill, says that the mill would be the only one of its kind in North America, a claim that SLAA members dispute.

“That's simply not true,” said SLAA member Bob Chapin. “There are two or three in Virginia that I can think of.”

Chapin said that he finds the position of the dam supporters “infuriating.”

Hatch says that no other mill operation meets all four criteria for authenticity. There are others with authentic equipment, he says, but they don't operate on their original sites.

“We would be upping the ante for historic wood restoration projects up and down the eastern seaboard,” said Hatch.

Chapin is unconvinced.

“It seems to me that there isn't a great hue and cry, even among classic Mainers, to see how a sawmill used to operate,” he said.

He concedes that there is a potential market for such wood, but says that it is “minuscule.” More likely, he says, the site would just turn into one more struggling mill.

“Within a mile of my house, there's a sawmill that's starving for work,” said Chapim.

Garcia says that the specific strain of Sebago Lake salmon is a commodity that the area can't afford to threaten.

“That is a huge economic impact for this particular salmon,” said Garcia. “People come from all over the region, and all over the world to catch landlocked salmon.”

Garcia says that other fish species also depend on unfettered access to the upper waters of the Crooked River. Many migratory species that would otherwise spawn in other tributaries are prevented from reaching those tributaries by Songo Lock. As a result, says Garcia, Crooked River is critically important to those species.

“If you stop that flow of water, those fish can only go to a certain point. Then you have a saturation of fish,” said Garcia. “It's a big deal to have free flowing rivers.”