by Shea Gunther
Mother Nature Network blog post
On Monday, work will begin on the removal of the Veazie Dam on Maine’s Penobscot River as part of a larger project to restore the natural flow to one of the state’s largest rivers. The effort is being led by a coalition of organizations operating under the name Penobscot River Restoration Trust. The organizations American Rivers, Atlantic Salmon Federation, Maine Audubon, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Penobscot Nation, the Nature Conservancy, and Trout Unlimited have all been working for years on this project that will ultimately reopen more than 1,000 miles of river habitat to Atlantic salmon and other anadromous fish â which are born in fresh water but live in the sea and only return to fresh water to spawn.
I thought this would be a good time to share a video of another dam removal project, clear across the country from Maine in Oregon. This time-lapse video of the Gold Ray Dam removal shows just how carefully the damworks are removed to minimize the negative downriver effects from sediment kicked up in the process.