Maine City Plan to Take away Two Dams Contains Marina Insurance coverage Measure

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Maine City Plan to Take away Two Dams Contains Marina Insurance coverage Measure

The Yarmouth city council voted unanimously this month to take away two town-owned dams on the Royal River and take into account fish passage enhancements at a stretch of rapids in between them, a historic vote greater than twenty years within the making.

The choice follows a federal proposal launched final spring and is essentially the most authoritative step to eradicating the Bridge Avenue Dam and East Elm Avenue Dam since 2009, when the city first started learning how their removing may enhance the Royal River’s well being and fisheries.

Along with eradicating the 2 dams and their corresponding fishways, the city decision additionally supplies for monitoring and managing fish passage past and between the dams, revegetating and stabilizing sections of the Royal’s riverbanks and defending towards invasive species.

To protect hen and fish habitat round Gooch Island, the place the East Elm Avenue Dam slows and diverts water to the bottom of the island, the removing plan requires in some way sustaining that move — which could possibly be finished by means of leaving and redesigning a small phase of the dam.

On the high of the decision is recognition that Yarmouth occupies the normal homeland and unceded territory of the Wabanaki folks, and the importance of the Royal River watershed the Wabanaki confer with as “Westcustogo.”

City council members and environmental advocates rejoiced in the course of the Dec. 19 assembly when the dam removing decision was launched and once more on Jan. 2 when it was in the end tweaked and adopted, reflecting on the years of labor that led to the second.

“This decision to revive the Royal River to a extra pure, free flowing state is a end result of years of research and debate,” stated city councilor David Craig. “It’s been a protracted, advanced and typically emotional course of and a productive one … Now it’s time to free the Royal.”

Restore Fish Entry

The U.S. Military Corps of Engineers decided in April that eradicating the dams has the best potential to enhance river habitat and restore fish entry towards the headwaters of the Royal River, historic spawning grounds for sea-going fish like alewives which have largely disappeared upstream of the dams.

Because the launch of the report, each the city council and a town-assembled Royal River job power have been assembly with the Corps, taking public remark and crafting a decision that aligns with the Corps’ suggestions.

The Corps adopted up with a extra thorough draft environmental influence evaluation the company printed in October, which affirmed eradicating the dams wouldn’t have hostile results on the surroundings nor the city harbor on the mouth of the Royal River.

Marina house owners in Yarmouth Harbor have lengthy voiced considerations concerning the potential presence of chemical contaminants in sediments which have collected behind the dams, and the Corps’ affirmation was a pivotal last step in the direction of removing.

“Chemical concentrations in sediment samples taken on the dams have been discovered to be very low,” the Corps discovered, predicting that removing would solely trigger short-term will increase in water turbidity (murkiness brought on by floating sediment), minor riverbank erosion and a few air and noise air pollution from the development tools.

“None of those short-term results will considerably have an effect on the surroundings,” the report concludes.

Danger Insurance coverage

The decision additionally instructs the city to help native companies in acquiring and financing “threat mitigation insurance coverage” to assist the marina house owners, leaning on tax increment financing “when applicable and out there.” The tactic is a typical one utilized by municipalities to divert future property tax revenues to fund public initiatives.

Though councilors have been assured within the security of removing, Craig stated that the insurance coverage measure is vital in “addressing the monetary dangers confronted by these companies towards the very low however non-zero threat from sediment transport and sediment high quality.”

Nonetheless, marina house owners voiced lingering skepticism of dam removing and the proposed financing plan on the Dec. 19 assembly, when the decision was launched.

“As fiduciaries for our city, you’ve gotten a accountability to decide on one of the best procedural monetary path ahead. The most effective monetary path ahead is unknown,” stated Deborah Delp, president of the Yankee Marina and Boatyard in Yarmouth.

“You don’t even understand how a lot it will price in whole, or what it could price the taxpayers of Yarmouth, but you’re directing and authorizing the city supervisor to maneuver ahead… writing a clean verify for which the taxpayers would possibly in the end be accountable.”

Price Points

The Corps estimated the entire price of the challenge to be round $5.7 million in its October draft report. Ought to Yarmouth transfer forward with the Corps and its proposal, the city could be liable to cowl 35 % of that price, or $2 million, although the decision doesn’t make that dedication.

City councilors refuted Delp’s criticisms and others, saying that regardless that a concrete funding plan isn’t in place, the city has finished its due diligence and is assured in its fundraising talents. They cited grant alternatives out there by means of the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would offer the city with extra flexibility than strictly contracting with the Corps.

“We don’t have every part we might like to have. We have now to decide with one of the best info in entrance of us,” stated Karin Orenstein, council vice chair, explaining that related city selections hardly ever have a one hundred pc plan earlier than they’re made.

To alleviate considerations concerning the prices of dam removing for Yarmouth taxpayers, the council added a clause on the Jan. 2 assembly that forbids the city from financing the challenge with property tax revenues, as an alternative authorizing outdoors funding sources from authorities companies, nonprofits and philanthropic organizations.

The decision additionally contains assurances that Yarmouth would pursue outdoors funding to take care of recreation and entry to the Royal River each inside city limits and upstream in North Yarmouth, the place the river’s move could be lowered to historic, barely decrease ranges with dam removing.

In remarks to the city council, Yarmouth resident Landis Hudson mirrored on her years of labor advocating for the dams’ removing and restoration of the Royal River as govt director of environmental nonprofit Maine Rivers, commending the city for navigating the contentious removing determination that different cities like Dover-Foxcroft have just lately rejected.

“It’s not simple to have conversations with people who find themselves apprehensive concerning the future, who see what they see and don’t need it to vary,” Hudson stated, however “life is about change. Rivers are about change.”

This story was initially printed by The Maine Monitor and distributed by means of a partnership with The Related Press.

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