Jordan Bay update

I visited a camp in Jordan Bay. I had not visited this camp since the 1990s. What a decline in water quality. I could not see the bottom anymore. The rocks were coated in slime and spike rush had overtaken the bottom near shore. The beach for late August was small at two feet below full pond. The camps in this area were old and heavily wooded- no development in 60 years.
Portland Water District data is saying what I am seeing out there about the clarity decline since 1990.
What a shame. Remember Ron Lovaglio, that DOC commissioner who made it sure no State Employee would say anything about his irresponsible highly unnatural lake level plan except him. He needs to go for a swim in some of these places. Since he is a big time regional manager for SAPPI and earns a 6 figure salary plus he can afford something that is not so slimy and has , good beaches. I do not mean to be too hard on Ron after all Gov. Baldacci and his folks have Ron beat. They had a chance to help Sebago in the relicensing and all they wanted to do was make Sebago higher. Baldacci's buddy over at Point Sebago needs that water higher enough to float a boat in and have something
more than ankle deep water to swim in.
It is amazing how the State is delaying the new license. It will be at least 5 years before the State files water quality certification after the 2005 FERC license completion so the license can move forward. The Baldacci administration thinks the marinas have a good point that less water should be run out of the lake during a drought in order to insure the highest lake levels and they need a study to see how low a flow they can run in the Presumpscot before they kill all life.

Presumpscot Salmon history

After reading an article in the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation winter 2007 newsletter by Dusti Faucher of the Friends of Presumpscot River, I learned that the secret negotiations with SAPPI continue to occur. If this “settlement framework” becomes reality the Presumpscot River watershed will always be fragmented and piscatorially impoverished.


Less than a thousand Atlantic Salmon were counted as returning to Maine rivers to spawn this year. On rivers other than the Penobscot 62 salmon were counted in 2007. Incredible numbers of large salmon were seen and caught in Sebago Lake after fish ladders were built on Presumpscot River dams in the 1800’s. The excerpt below from an historical book is another example of history which fosters our resolve to fight this sad surrender of the Presumpscot’s future.

From Fishing in New Hampshire by Jack Noon
p.30
" Though there are apparently no documents in existence that gives a sense of the numbers of salmon in the Piscataqua drainage during the early decades of white settlement, in 1717 Merchant Archibald MacPhaedris wrote an account of the salmon to be had "in our new plantations about 40 miles from this town" at "Casko." His enthusiasm for salmon -fishing possibilities might have mirrored the conditions on the Piscataqua a century earlier- before white settlers had commenced
fishing for salmon:

[U]pon ye sea side.... there is more salmon and all manner of fish than in any place in ye World...
The River that leads through ye land, where all your Shipping lays......, is full of Salmon, that in ye season you may take 1000 tuns here. [ A tun is a container holding 252 gallons.] They are sole [sold] for 20/ [(probably) shillings per] Barrell." 15"

Jack Noon also provides an accurate historic account of salmon numbers on an unspoiled Labrador river in the late 1700's. The numbers are about actually 6 times less than that of MacPhaedris's account.

I have to say that the Labrador River had no comparable spawning habitat as the Presumpscot drainage. Even at 6 times less fish taken, that is still a substantial number of salmon.

It is very possible that the Presumpscot – Sebago Lake drainage was the greatest salmon spawning fishery of North America.