LUPC, AMC reach agreement on Second Roach Pond dam violations

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    BREWER — The Appalachian Mountain Club and the Maine Land Use Planning Commission have reached an administrative settlement to resolve violations incurred by AMC during a dam reconstruction project at Medawisla Wilderness Camps.
    The agreement will be formally accepted at LUPC’s monthly meeting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, April 8 at Jeff’s Catering in Brewer.

    The violations, which occurred in the summer of 2013, will cost AMC a $5,000 fine and up to $70,000 in construction costs for a new fish crossing in the affected area.
    The agreement was negotiated with LUPC Executive Director Nicholas Livesay and Rod Falla, an environmental specialist from the Greenville regional office of LUPC.
    In the 33-page document, LUPC outlines how the violation occurred, acknowledging that “the purpose of the project was to reconstruct the dam to prevent further deterioration and maintain the water level in the pond.”
    According to Livesay and Falla’s report, AMC proposed to facilitate fish movement into the rebuilt dam. “The passage was proposed to be up a rock ramp with resting pools that passed through the lowest portion of the rock dam,” they wrote. “AMC did not propose to raise the water levels in Second Roach Pond as part of the reconstruction project and did not evaluate the impacts of raising the water levels in the application material.”
    However, when construction started in July 2014, “AMC’s contractor realized that the dam as designed and presented in the application would end up rerouting water around the structure – an unintended and undesirable result.” 
    AMC provided a new engineered plan that included an 85-foot extension intended to ensure the dam worked as intended and didn’t reroute the Roach River through the adjacent wetland area to the north of the dam. On Aug. 8, 2014, AMC’s contractor finished rebuilding the dam which included the extension.
    But upon completing reconstruction of the dam, the diversion channel that had been used to ensure flow to the Roach River was closed, blocking the flow from the pond to the river for 11 days.
    Remedial action was taken by AMC, under supervision of LUPC and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, to restore the flow as early as possible.
    The $5,000 fine was imposed for “dewatering the Roach River.”
    AMC also must build a new crossing “that facilitates fish passage and provides access to at least one mile of upstream habitat. This project must be in the general area of the Roach River and involve a cost to AMC of $70,000.”
    AMC filed an application last year to expand Medawisla Wilderness Camps, increasing its lodging capacity from 38 to 86. The site is located about 20 miles north of Greenville in Shawtown Township.