By Nick Sambides Jr.
BDN Staff Writer
TOWNSHIP 6 RANGE 8, Maine — If you’ve caught a fish or swung a paddle in the Penobscot River north of Bangor, chances are you owe at least some of your fun to Donald Dudley and the Matagamon Dam.
Dudley has operated the 218-foot-long and 30-foot-high concrete dam since 1978. He raises the water level to allow for fishing and boating in spring and summer and lowers it in fall and winter to ensure that ice and runoff don’t overwhelm the banks of the lake or river. The dam controls much of the water flow into the headwaters of the East Branch of the Penobscot River near the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
But the 75-year-old dam needs about $230,000 worth of work done to it over the next seven years, without which, Dudley said, shorefront properties could eventually become “mudfront” properties.
The dam is a crucial aspect of Penobscot County’s aquaculture and recreation industries, said Rick Hill, a member of the Matagamon Lake Association Inc., which is organizing efforts to raise money to repair the dam.
“The recreation aspect [of Grand Lake and the East Branch] would be extremely curtailed without the dam. The money that comes into the Patten-Shin Pond-Matagamon area would also be significantly curtailed,” said Hill, who also is the retired former owner of Mount Chase Lodge in Patten.
The association is looking for donations through its website and a mailing address it contains, but its members have been hesitant to go much beyond that with its fundraising efforts because of the new monument designation, Hill said.
The association wrote to U.S. Sen. Angus King and National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis in late June seeking to determine whether the park service would play a role in dam stewardship.
A spokesman for Jarvis said recently that he is looking into the matter. A spokesman for King said his office never received the association’s letter, but contacted Hill when reached by a Bangor Daily News reporter. Workers at King’s office intend to meet with Hill “to learn more about the issue and evaluate how our office may be able to play a constructive role.”
“We also intend to make the National Park Service aware of the concerns expressed in the letter as well,” King spokesman Scott Ogden said.
Will the National Park Service take control of the dam? Will it contribute to dam maintenance? The association has owned the dam since 2001, and the federal government has no claim to it, but the dam plays a vital role in maintaining one of the key features to the monument: the section of the Penobscot River that flows through some of the monument.
“When they advertise the monument, you see the river playing a big role in those advertisements,” Hill said. “We want to be sure what [the federal government’s] role in this” is before going too far into fundraising efforts.
Engineers who inspected the dam last year and recommended the repairs have assured association members that the dam is sound — in no immediate danger of collapse — but that the repair work needs to occur within the next decade to prevent structural problems, Hill said.
Among the recommendations are that steel reinforcement be added to the six piers on the lakefront side of the dam over the next two years for about $150,000. The reinforcement would include adding up to 9 inches of concrete to the piers.
The engineers recommended that the rest of the approximately $80,000 worth of work, on piers on the riverward side of the dam, be done within seven years, Dudley said.
The dam’s fishway and ability to control water levels play a critical role in maintaining the abundant spawning grounds for lake trout, brook trout and salmon.
Those fish typically go over the spillway from the lake to spawn in the East Branch and return via the fishway, said Dan McCaw, a fisheries biologist for the Penobscot Indian Nation.
The Penobscot Indian Nation owns the islands in the river and, it contends, the water itself. The Penobscot Indian Nation and the U.S. Department of Justice are appealing a Maine federal judge’s ruling that found the tribe’s reservation includes the islands on the main stem of the Penobscot River but not the water. That appeal is pending.
The lake association formed in October 2000 in response to the divestiture of dams from a consortium of utilities and paper manufacturers who managed hydroelectric storage in the East Branch Penobscot River system, according to documents provided by Dudley and Nels Kramer, a regional fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
The association took ownership of the dam “for the express purpose of maintaining the structure for the benefit of fish, wildlife, recreational values and downstream safety,” the report states.
The association adopted a new water management regime that year, which “prioritized fish and wildlife enhancement and essential flood control measures over the historical operational priority of providing” water for downstream hydropower generation.
Hill said he was hopeful that people would eventually appreciate the dam’s importance to northern Maine.
“I am hopeful that once people are aware, they will say, ‘OK, I could support this.’ The single biggest problem is the lack of awareness,” Hill said. “The only people that really know what is going on are the folks in the association.”
For more information about the association’s efforts, or to donate, visit katahdinoutdoors.com/dam/.
