Voters approve takeover of local dams at Toddy Pond, Alamoosook
Collaboration among towns seen as historic: ‘Nobody else has done this in the state,’ says one official
Four towns voted to start the process of taking ownership of the Toddy Pond dam. File photo.
By Tricia Thomas
Voters in each of the four towns that border Toddy Pond have approved a plan to take over a concrete dam on the lake that its current owner wants to abandon.
Public ownership of the dam, approved by a sizeable majority of voters in Blue Hill, Penobscot, Orland and Surry on November 4, will save the it from being dismantled and the lake being drained—prospects that an ad-hoc coalition of citizens and town officials have been campaigning against for nearly two years.
Voters in Orland also approved a similar plan for a concrete dam on Alamoosook Lake, which is located entirely in Orland. Approval of both referendums paves the way for the establishment of two separate watershed districts—the Toddy Pond Watershed Management District and the Alamoosook Lake Watershed District—to repair and maintain the aging dams, and to fund first-year startup costs.
Gina Bushong, an Orland select board member and member of the Narramissic Watershed Coalition, said she was “very pleased” with the election results. Bushong credits the coalition’s outreach efforts, along with high voter turnout in Orland and the other towns, for the referendums’ success.
“We had a gigantic turnout, particularly in Orland. We had over 1,100 voters out of [about] 1,900 registered voters come out for the election. The two state ballot questions were obviously a big draw as well,” she said.
“I’m very pleased that we were able to get the facts to the voters. People were well informed. We had five public meetings and did a huge outreach campaign, really just trying to get the facts to people,” Bushong added. “We felt that, if people saw the facts, they would see that it made more sense to vote in favor of these districts than it would have to reject them.”
Bushong also credited the “hundreds” of people who volunteered and donated money for the cause, as well as the dogged commitment to collaboration among stakeholders, with its success.
“It was a real testament to the work that we did that all four towns that surround Toddy Pond voted to approve the ballot initiative. It also is a really good model for real collaboration,” she said. “You had four towns working diligently with the two lake associations to forge a path that was going to work for everybody. We all stuck together, even though there are vast differences between us.”
Both Toddy Pond and Alamoosook Lake were dammed more than 100 years ago to supply water to a now-shuttered paper mill in Bucksport. When the plant was sold in 2014, ownership of the dams also changed hands. Last year, new owners AIM/Bucksport Mill LLC petitioned the state to relinquish ownership of the two dams, along with a third dam at Silver Lake in Bucksport. While the company’s first application was rejected, its second was approved by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) last November.
If voters had rejected the referendums, the dams could have been dismantled and the lakes drained, resulting in an eight-foot drop in water levels, spokespeople for the Narramissic Watershed Coalition have said. The drop would have myriad long-term environmental impacts, render existing boat launches on both lakes unusable, and affect area fire departments’ ability to use water from the lakes for firefighting. The dams’ abandonment also could have resulted in an estimated $50 million reduction in property valuations, the coalition said.
Under the approved Toddy Pond referendum, half of the costs associated with owning and maintaining the dam there will be borne by pond property owners via monetary “assessments” levied by the waterfront district. The other half will be proportionally funded by taxes from Blue Hill, Orland, Penobscot and Surry. Similarly, half of the costs of owning the Alamoosook Lake dam will be culled from waterfront assessments, with Orland taxpayers funding the remaining half. The coalition has developed an “online cost calculator” to help taxpayers estimate how much they’ll likely be paying, available at https://damcalc.bluehillme.gov/.
Bushong said the coalition plans to gather for a celebration before getting down to next steps, which include getting the watershed districts up and running, taking ownership of the dams, and developing plans to maintain them in the short and long terms.
“There are still process steps that we have to go through before the dams get transferred and all of that is worked out, but I think we can effectively say that the lakes have been preserved, and I don’t see what wrinkle could come up to jeopardize that as we move forward,” Bushong said. But I’m feeling very pleased. A major hurdle has been crossed.”
That hurdle also was an historic one, Bushong said.
“We’ve set a new course. Nobody else has done this in the state—this partnership of private land owners and [public] communities. This is a very new model that, hopefully, will serve as a good model for other towns facing these kinds of situations,” she said. “We did something that was very unique.”
