AUGUSTA, Maine — April 30, 2015 — A legislative committee voted unanimously Wednesday to reject a bill that would have once again blocked alewives from reaching the upper sections of the St. Croix River.
It took lawmakers on the Marine Resources Committee less than 10 minutes to dispatch L.D. 800, which had been the subject of an hours-long public hearing two days earlier. Lawmakers voted in 2013 to reopen the upper St. Croix to alewives after years of heated debate.
“I didn’t really hear anything new on Monday,” said Rep. Walter Kumiega, D-Deer Isle, the committee’s co-chair. “It was a unanimous vote two years ago.”
The bill’s supporters, led by registered guides and sporting camp owners in the Grand Lake Stream region, contend that alewives were never historically present in the upper river because several waterfalls or natural formations blocked their upstream passage. They also blame alewives for the collapse of smallmouth bass populations in Spednik Lake and other lakes, when barriers at several dams were removed to allow upstream migration during the 1980s.