Waterways Restored: Case Study 9 – Maine’s Androscoggin River

When the Clean Water Act is applied to American waterways, good things can happen. Our recent report, Waterways Restored: The Clean Water Act’s Impact on 15 American Rivers, Lakes and Bays, highlights waterways where the Clean Water Act’s protections and improvement provisions have had positive effects. Polluted waterways have been cleaned up, pristine waterways have been preserved, and threatened waterways have been protected. All waterways deserve these opportunities.

In this blog series, we’ll showcase individual case studies from the report. The next installment looks at a Maine river that helped inspire the Clean Water Act.

MAINE: Once Covered in Toxic Foam, the Androscoggin River Is Now a Sportfishing Destination

In the late 1960s, the pollution of the Androscoggin River in New Hampshire and Maine was a chief inspiration for the Clean Water Act, which was principally written by U.S. Senator Ed Muskie, who grew up along the river. For decades, the Androscoggin was used as a sewer for communities and industries along the river. It was known for cascading drifts of toxic foam and for noxious fumes detectable miles downriver. Today, thanks in large part to the Clean Water Act, the Androscoggin has become a home to fishing and recreation.

The Androscoggin has a long history of pollution and poor treatment. By the early 1800s, illegally constructed dams had destroyed the river’s enormous fish runs and inspired a citizen petition to the Legislature protesting the loss of the fishing “with which nature had before bountifully supplied.”[i] By the end of the 19th century, the river had become home to some of the largest paper-producing companies in the world.[ii]

In 1888, Maine’s paper mills introduced sulfite into their pulping process, which had a devastating effect on the Androscoggin. Because of sulfite’s interaction with certain bacteria, the new process dramatically lowered the river’s levels of dissolved oxygen, rendering the water nearly incapable of supporting life and destroying the fish population.[iii]

Mill and sewage pollution continued mostly unabated throughout the first decades of the 20th century. A 1957 study found dissolved oxygen levels under 2 parts per million, as low as they had ever been, and too low to sustain fish life. In the 1960s, the Androscoggin reportedly stank of rotten eggs, and toxic foam from paper mills was described by one Maine farmer as “too thick to paddle, too thin to plow.”[iv]

By the time the Act was enacted in 1972, championed by Senator Muskie, the river’s decades of unrestricted discharge and damming had made it almost uninhabitable for fish and other aquatic life.[v]

The Act quickly led to dramatic improvements in water quality by providing funding for municipal sewage waste treatment, requiring the construction of new paper mill treatment facilities, and laying the groundwork for Maine’s creation of stringent fresh water classifications.

Paper mills, forced by the Clean Water Act to adhere to limits on their discharges of pollution to the river, began to build new treatment facilities.[vi] The major source of pollution in the Androscoggin’s headwaters was the Brown Co. paper plant in Berlin, New Hampshire. Brown’s waste treatment facility went online in 1976.[vii] Other mill waste treatment facilities also went live in Gorham, New Hampshire, and in Bethel, Topsham and Mechanic Falls, Maine. [viii] Meanwhile, municipalities began construction of sewage treatment plants, aided by federal funds provided under the Clean Water Act.[ix]

The new industrial and municipal treatment facilities dramatically improved water quality in the Androscoggin.[x] By 1977, just five years after the Act’s passage, most sections of the Androscoggin had oxygen levels above 5 ppm – high enough to support fish life.[xi] By 1987, Dennis Purington of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) was able to say, in praise of the Act: “The Androscoggin was an open sewer . . . It’s relatively clean now.”[xii]

In 1986, Maine overhauled its fresh surface water classification system, setting new water quality goals that refused to accept unfishable and unswimmable conditions in Maine waterways.[xiii] (New Hampshire set similarly high standards in 1991.)[xiv] Since 1986, the Maine standards have served, as stated by the Maine DEP, “as powerful statements about our willingness to not let the status quo define our expectations.”[xv] After a 2005 citizen lawsuit seeking to enforce the Clean Water Act, state environmental officials ordered two paper mills on the Androscoggin to meet these new water pollution standards.[xvi]

While the Androscoggin continues to face pollution, including nutrient waste and algae blooms, it is almost unrecognizable from its previous state. The river is now home to numerous boating and kayaking tour companies and is now able to support aquatic life. Smallmouth bass, largemouth bass and chain pickerel have made a resurgence with the help of restocking projects.[xvii]

Today, the Androscoggin still has a long way to go. Yet this 164-mile river, once a veritable sewer running through Maine and New Hampshire, has now been largely freed of its reputation for toxic waste and rotten smells, and reclaimed as a source of recreation for New Englanders.

  

[i] 1800s citizens petition: Doug Watts, A Brief History, accessed at mainerivers.org/watershed-profiles/androscoggin-watershed, 11 September 2014; previous abundance of fish: Maine Department of Marine Resources, Androscoggin River Project, accessed at www.maine.gov/dmr/searunfish/programs/androscoggin.htm, Sept. 2014.

[ii] Center of industry for decades: Wallace Scot McFarlane, Environmental History, Defining a Nuisance: Pollution, Science and Environmental Politics on Maine’s Androscoggin River, 8 March 2012; largest paper-producing companies in the world: Bethel Historical Society, A River’s Journey: The Story of the Androscoggin, accessed at www.bethelhistorical.org/A_River‘s_Journey.html, 11 September 2014.

[iii] Wallace Scot McFarlane, Environmental History, Defining a Nuisance: Pollution, Science and Environmental Politics on Maine’s Androscoggin River, 8 March 2012.

[iv] Michael Gordon, “The River Styx No More,” Bates Alumni Magazine, Fall 1998.            

[v] G. Russell Danner, “Androscoggin River Fish Health Survey,” Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, 20 November 2000.

[vi] Andrew Fisk, “The Clean Water Act in Maine: Goals and Financing,” Maine Policy Review 17.1, 2008.

[vii] Tux Turkel, “From Dirty Top Ten Androscoggin River Has Now Entered Clean Fame,” Lewiston Evening Journal, 9 April 1977, available at news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1913&dat=19770409&id=BD0pAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jmUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1429,1322091.

[viii] Tux Turkel, “Something Else Important On Nov. 5 Ballot,” Lewiston Evening Journal, 8 November 1977, available at news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1913&dat=19771108&id=16VGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fvMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5242,1202559.

[ix] See note iii.                                                                             

[x] Ibid.

[xi] See note vi.

[xii] Dennis Hevesi, “Hopes High Over Extension of Clean Water Act,” Herald Journal, 15 February 1987, available at news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19870215&id=AD0sAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mM4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6987,5404903.

[xiii] Andrew Fisk, “The Clean Water Act in Maine: Goals and Financing,” Maine Policy Review 17.1, 2008; Maine DEP, Classification of Maine Waters, accessed at www.maine.gov/dep/water/monitoring/classification/index.html, 11 September 2014.

[xiv] New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, Water Quality, accessed at des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/wqs/history.htm, 11 September 2014.

[xv] See note vi.

[xvi] John Richardson, “Paper Company Sued Over River Pollution,” Portland Press Herald, 27 July 2005.

[xvii] See note v.