After getting an assist from state officials, a group of towns in Hancock County are making plans to take ownership of two dams that a scrap metal company wants to get rid of.
This month the Legislature approved, and Gov. Janet Mills signed into law, three bills that are aimed at allowing quasi-municipal watershed management districts to be formed to own and maintain dams on Alamoosook Lake and Toddy Pond. The towns that surround these lakes — Orland, Blue Hill, Surry and Penobscot — have been worried since last summer that the company that owns the dams could just abandon the properties, risking a severe reduction of water levels.
The petition alarmed area officials because of the implications of abandoning the dams — either by opening them and letting the lakes drain out, or leaving them as is, risking eventual failure and downstream floods if the dams were not monitored and maintained.
Bucksport Mill LLC, which bought the defunct Verso Paper mill in Bucksport in 2015, petitioned the state Department of Environmental Protection last summer to abandon three dams, which once were used as part of the paper mill’s operation. Bucksport Mill is a subsidiary of American Iron and Metal, a Canadian firm that bought the shuttered mill mainly for the scrap value of the old buildings and equipment that Verso left behind.
With the new laws in place, officials in each of the four towns are making plans to hold referendum votes, likely in November, on whether they and the lake associations should take on ownership and management of the water bodies, which draw significant recreational use and boost property values.
Scott Miller, a member of Blue Hill’s Select Board, said the towns have hired an engineering firm to inspect the dams, and to estimate their conditions and how much maintaining them will cost. With the Legislature approving the plan to establish watershed management districts, which will allow the towns to assess homeowners for their share of maintaining the dams, area residents are feeling less anxious about what Bucksport Mill LLC might do.
“At least now we can see the path forward,” Miller said. “Nobody really knows how it will play out.”
A third new law amends the state’s 30-year-old dam abandonment law, which never before had been tested by an owner who wanted to abandon a dam. The changes give the state Department of Environmental Protection more leverage in imposing conditions on dam owners that want to rid themselves of dams that are no longer commercially viable. It also extends the time period for potential new owners to be found, which will help the towns navigate through the lengthy processes of due diligence, state approval and preparing public votes.
Municipal officials in interested towns, which include Bucksport, have been critical of AIM, saying that the company has not been cooperative in providing information about the dams to the towns that they need to perform their due diligence in deciding whether to take ownership of the facilities.
“There are still things that haven’t been provided,” said Susan Lessard, Bucksport’s outgoing town manager. “We’ve received two information dumps from them. What some of it does is raise more questions.”
Officials with Bucksport Mill LLC have not responded to any messages over the past year from the Bangor Daily News seeking comment on the dams.
The company also owns and wants to rid itself of a dam on Silver Lake in Bucksport, which is used as that town’s water supply and also provides water to two local companies, Maine Water and power company Bucksport Generation.
Unlike the other two lakes, Silver Lake does not have a significant number of residential waterfront property owners, so Bucksport is not interested in establishing a multi-party watershed management district. But Lessard said the town may decide to acquire the dam on its own if AIM gets approval to let it go, and if the town can work out dam management agreements with Maine Water, which provides drinking water services to the town, and Bucksport Generation.
Alamoosook Lake lies entirely within the town of Orland, so a watershed management district there would consist solely of the town and the lake’s home ownership association.
Toddy Pond is split between four towns — Blue Hill, Orland, Penobscot and Surry — so those four towns would partner with that lake’s homeowner association to establish that district.
