From Blight to Beauty
The Regeneration of the Upper Androscoggin River
By Thomas K. Remington
 

  
I was born in 1952 at Rumford Community Hospital in Rumford, Maine. The Androscoggin River flowed through Rumford after it had left Bethel where I grew up. For those of us living on this river, it is no secret that the river was a disgusting mess. Needless to say, it is next to impossible to erase that firmly etched vision from the minds of the locals from my generation and older.

The Androscoggin River officially originates as an outlet of Umbagog Lake in Maine. A quick look at a map will show that Umbagog Lake has a quite sizeable watershed. Its main feeders are the Magalloway and Rapid Rivers. Not unlike most bodies of water, you can continue to trace the flow of water back through an amazing maze of rivers, brooks, streams, lakes and ponds.
 

Out of Umbagog Lake, the Upper Androscoggin River flows in a general westerly direction into our neighbor state, New Hampshire. The portion of the river from Umbagog to where it flows into the city of Berlin, there is relatively little industrial pollution. Darkening of the waters begins throughout most of the headwaters through a process called tanning. This is a natural decomposition of organic matter and water flowing through the root systems of the trees. Many people confuse water pollution with tanning because in many cases the water becomes dark enough that it is difficult to see into the water. We all enjoy seeing crystal clear water. It must also be noted that even though water appears crystal clear to our eyes, it may be very much polluted.

The river winds through the city of Berlin heading now in more of a southerly direction toward Gorham and on to Shelburne before crossing back into Maine. Once in Maine, the flow continues on into Gilead, West Bethel, Bethel on down to Rumford and beyond. Eventually the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Fort Popham near Brunswick and Topsham.

The focus of my personal recollections of the Androscoggin will be on the upper section of the river from Umbagog to Rumford.

I know very little of the history of the river in much detail. I might be able to recall some of the history lessons in what would now be called middle school but don’t hold your breath waiting for in depth coverage.

I know that the Androscoggin Indians found the river to be a valuable resource to them for many things including transportation, food and other forms of sustenance. It has been told that long before the white man came along and began erecting obstacles in the river, many sea-run species of fish migrated up and down the river.

There are several islands scattered throughout the river between Shelburne and Bethel and the Indians inhabited these islands. Canoes and kayaks were used for transportation up and down the river and navigating to and from the islands was much easier I am sure.

The white man began to inhabit the region and even with their comparatively higher levels of education, they had very little respect for the immense resource the river provided. Promptly they began their onslaught of destroying it.

From this moment on, man used the river more as a cesspool and dumping grounds for anything and everything he, in his throwaway world, didn’t want anymore.

Towns and villages sprung up along the river and with it more people. Denser populations along with industrialization, it wasn’t long before the entire channel that comprised the river became a blithe. Even today, if you were to investigate the riverbanks up and down the river, you would find a seemingly endless array of dumpsites.

It has only been in recent years that raw sewerage from towns and cities have been stopped from being directly dumped into the waters. Some towns still have difficulties in keeping up with the loads of wastewater generated by the people and still many streets’ storm drains empty directly to the river without being treated.

Let’s turn the wheels of time back again to the late fifties and early sixties. I grew up in East Bethel on the banks of the Androscoggin River. I hated the river and feared it. I actually had recurring nightmares about the river and the evil it possessed.

One was about my brother and myself riding in a logging truck with my uncle. We are driving along the road that runs beside the river. It is night as well and soon we lose control of the truck and plunge into the dark murky waters. Fortunately, as with most nightmares, I wake up.

The fear was not imagined only in my dreams. The waters that flowed were so black with pollution that only tall tales would say how deep the waters were and what was under the surface.

The river was a resource to us that is for sure. It saved the town thousands of dollars at that time because waster was dumped into the river. There was never any thought that was given as to what might be the consequences for such actions. Everybody used the river in the same fashion.

We dumped our own garbage onto the banks of the river. Our dumpsite was high enough up from the water level that even the highest water that I can recall never reached the refuse. But the hundreds of other dumps along the river would diminish in size as high water would wash it away downstream to somebody else’s land.

The river was dead. Nothing could live in it and rumors circulated about the monsters and deformed creatures that were seen near it. I was truly petrified of the river and stayed far, far away. I hated it and wanted nothing to do with it.

You may think I’m weird for feeling this way but I can honestly say that I am not alone. This is probably the biggest reason why it is next to impossible to drum up support from the local natives to promote the conservation of the river and market it as a valuable resource. People will just laugh.

Water is an incredible thing. Brain experts have all the reasons why people are attracted to water from the draw back to our days of protected bliss within the womb of our mothers, to finding our living soles – ourselves - within the spirit of the water. There is one thing for sure and that is everyone needs to respect the river for the potential power it can wield. On a summer day when the water is lazily flowing through its channels, it appears so tame. When the banks begin to swell from the rising water of heavy rains and melting snow and the ice is cracking and echoing through the valleys, nothing can stop it. It must run its course and if that course means redirecting the river, so be it. If it means taking out houses, bridges and anything else man has erected, there’s nothing you or I can do about it.

Our history books show us that people built homes and farms along the river only to retreat back to higher ground. Settlers played this yo-yo game of living on the river to living in the hills and then back to the river again. When dams were erected as a means of better controlling the floodwaters, then inhabitants could more safely live near the river.

I can’t exactly say when the slow cleanup began. I never fished in the river directly but I did fish small feeder brooks and a few larger streams. It seemed the only place you could find life was the farther away from the main river you got.

A good friend of mine who lived and grew up in East Bethel too, began trapping the river from the state line down the river to Bethel. He was relentless in his efforts and was able to eke out a modest income. Today, Neil Olson is one of the most respected and knowledgeable people about trapping and the Upper Androscoggin River. He knows perhaps every nook and cranny, every deep hole and the shallows. Even when the river was at its worst, Neil remained respectful of it for what it had to offer. I’m not sure that he would be willing to put on his bathing suit and jump in today though but the respect is still there.

Without any scientific data to back up my assumptions, I would have to say that the river polluting reached its peak in the 1960s and here’s the reason I say that.

I figure there must have been a lag from the time that a decline in the amount of pollution being dumped into the river and when it finally caught up with wildlife and killed it off or forced it to other waters nearby for survival.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I used to duck hunt quite often on the river. My good high school friend, Greg Cummings and I would make trip after trip from Gilead to Bethel in our canoe with shotguns in tote. It finally got to the point in the early 70s that a trip down the river between Gilead and Bethel would result in nothing. There were no more ducks and geese.

It was probably at this time that I really turned my back on the river. It had taken years from my childhood to get to a point where I lost my fear of the river and now I wanted nothing to do with it. It was a nasty, vile and wretched wasteland that offered nothing. Any respect that I might have gained from the many duck hunting excursions along the waterway had vanished.

That was over thirty years ago and a lot of water under and over bridges. I wasn’t the only one who began to realize that the river was bad. Lawmakers and residents began making enough noise and attention was being paid to the condition of the river. Laws were passed and the major polluters were forced to begin cleaning up the discharges they were putting into the river. It would take decades to change what we humans had done to the river.

I can guarantee one thing. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many laws we make and how many conservation and environmental groups get formed, the Androscoggin River will never be what it once was. The damage has been done and much of it cannot be reversed. We can clean up the water by reducing what gets put into it by man, but the years of dumping along its banks and into the bottoms of the river, will remain.

The jury is still out as to whether the years of contaminated silk that has built up and lined the bottom of the river will be eliminated. Only time will tell.

The work that has gone into the clean up effort has been good. The paper mills have reduced contaminates into the water greatly but more needs to be done. Municipalities along the corridor have cleaned up their acts as well. Education of the general public has helped in making people aware that what was a normal practice of abusing the river is not acceptable anymore. The river has come a long ways.

I have watched over the past years as the birds returned. Ducks and geese are back, great blue heron are commonplace, osprey and bald eagles can be seen hunting the waters for food, the list goes on.

The fish are jumping too. Bass, rainbow, brown and brook trout are abundant and fishing has returned. The Upper Androscoggin offers some of the finest river fishing that can be found anywhere in the state of Maine.

All of this didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen by itself. During the nineties when I was working at the River View Motel just east of Bethel and located on the river, I became involved in a group that worked with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Our objective was to help in educating the public about non-point source polluting.

It is easy to point a finger at paper mills as we watch pollutants pour from the pipes that discharge into the water. With the right amount of money, those methods can be eliminated. The non-point source pollutants are much more difficult to locate and prevent. Examples of these would be fertilizers, oils from highways and just about anything that can be washed into a watershed from rains and flooding.

We opted to test the waters in five locations along the Upper Androscoggin over a substantially long period of time to assist the DEP in monitoring the water quality. This, coupled with making the reports available to the public, brought locals into more of an awareness of what was the real condition of the river.

The results of the long testing showed that the water was consistently of good quality with no spikes up or down from heavy rains etc. This was encouraging and answered some questions that had been raised through discussions about the river.

The water quality was improving and the river was beginning to come back to life. Many people who did not grow up around this area were discovering the river. They were not biased with past memories of the stench, rot and filth that clouded those like myself.

Slowly the word began to spread that the river was clean – clean in a relative sense in that it was certainly a far cry from the days of black water. Above Bethel, the major polluter was the paper mill in Berlin. They had gotten their act together and cleaned it up. Fortunately for those of us living downstream, a scientist hired by the Paper Company to study what the mill was dumping into the ground, water and emitting into the air was an avid fisherman. He was quite instrumental in directing the powers within the mill in the direction they should go.

But make no mistake about it, laws required the paper mills to clean up their messes but that was not the driving force behind their actions. The real motivator was quite ironic. Because the water was so dirty, paper mills couldn’t make high quality paper. They found they had to clean up the water before they could use it to make paper.

Through this process, they also discovered that over the long haul a “closed loop” system could become beneficial financially for them. This would mean not having to use water from the river. It would also mean developing the right equipment to be able to extract from the water used in processing the paper, all the chemical elements rendering the water used clean again. Extracting the elements would also mean being able to capture and reuse the expensive chemicals again and again, potentially saving millions of dollars. What better motivator could there be?

I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble nor is my intention to minimize the efforts of the major polluters, but economics is still the bottom line behind the effort.

The Upper Androscoggin River is a strikingly beautiful stretch of waterway. It flirts with the big mountains along the White Mountain chain but ultimately finds a path between the Mahoosuc Range and White Mountains. The scenery in places is breathtaking. Canoe flotillas down the river in the early morning can provide wildlife lovers with some pretty awesome sights.

One early summer evening, just before dark, I jumped into my small inflatable boat and small motor and headed upstream from the dock behind the River View Motel. My path upstream was etched into my mind as I had learned where the big rocks were and the shallow areas.

With my boat and motor, I could easily navigate to a spot about a half-mile upstream from the U.S. Route 2 bridge in Bethel. There the waters became so shallow at that time of year, I couldn’t get through it.

The trip was always enjoyable because I never knew what I would find around every corner. This particular evening, I sat in my boat in total disbelief and I watched the water everywhere boiling with fish. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. I have been on some remarkable bodies of water before, noted to be some of the finest fishing anywhere in the world, and not seen fish jumping, rolling and breaking the surface like it was that evening.

There was a hatch on of some insect of which I was never able to determine and the fish were definitely hungry. I was empty handed – no fishing pole or camera. It was at this point that the back I had turned against the river began to swing back around to meet her once again. Perhaps there was hope for me that this disgusting thing I had learned to dislike could become a friend.

One summer a group of people from the country Poland visited the Bethel region. My memory fails me at the moment as to all the reasons and the logistics of how they ended up in Bethel but one thing they wanted to learn about was our river.

They had learned that the Androscoggin River was classified at one time as one of the ten most polluted rivers in the United States. It was cleaner than it had been in years and was getting better. Some were looking at making the river an asset by promoting its qualities for recreation. The Polish group wanted to learn more from someone who had done it.

I have pictures and slides of the group when we stopped on a sandbar during a canoe trip, right in front of where the Bethel Outdoor Adventure center sits today. It wasn’t there then.

A group of us called the Friends of the Androscoggin had hosted the Polish entourage on a trip down the river. When we got to this point we stopped and they all jumped in the water for a swim. I sat in my canoe in shock.

In my mind I was still envisioning the 1950s and 1960s when I dared not step into the water with rubber boots on for fear it would rot through my boots and kill me. Nobody in his or her right mind would swim in this water.

And this is the reality that is being faced today in efforts to present the river as a quality destination for fishing, boating, swimming and wildlife watching.

It has been the effort of many “from away” that have no prior knowledge of what the river was really like at its lowest point, to begin the process. The older generation of locals, myself included, remember and it is difficult to move beyond those memories. Time will prevail and memories will fade.

I am perhaps an exception to the rule when it comes to the involvement of local natives in the promotion of the river. I am eager to present the river as a valuable asset, much in the same way as the Androscoggin Indians did many, many years ago, only because I have chosen to move beyond those memories of yesteryear. It is not an easy task and those not familiar with the river’s history need to bear in mind what they are dealing with in their efforts to promote the river.

Perhaps a few locals getting out on the river and doing some fishing, boating and swimming will slowly begin to convince the natives that it’s all right – the river is a friend. I have fished the river often, I have canoed miles and miles of it countless times, I have driven my inflatable boat up river and down river and have even ridden a pontoon boat from Rumford upstream to Bethel but I have not been swimming voluntarily.

Duck hunting, I have fallen in, I’ve tipped over in a canoe and slipped and gotten pretty wet while fishing. Once I voluntarily jumped in to prove a point (what that point was I’m not sure) but I was immediately out of the water and I went and showered off. I have not on my on volition been swimming. I guess I have a ways to go.