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A coalition of lawmakers in Hancock County are working on a slate of bills that could allow Maine towns to band together and take ownership of abandoned dams, as well as clarify what that process would look like. 

The timing of the legislation is pertinent. The owner of the former Verso Paper Mill in Bucksport, AIM Development USA, is in the process of forfeiting ownership of three dams in the Bucksport area, where hundreds of residents reside on the dams’ lakes and pond.

If the Maine Department of Environmental Protection allows AIM to carry out forfeiture, it would result in the supervised dewatering of Toddy Pond, Silver Lake and Alamoosook Lake, turning lake water into mudflats, depriving Bucksport of its drinking water source and threatening the operations of a gas-fired power plant.

Full forfeiture has never occurred in Maine, and the vaguely phrased statute that guides it has left residents and officials in Bucksport, Blue Hill, Orland, Surry and Penobscot scrambling to consider how they might assume ownership. That process has been muddied by AIM’s vague answers to questions about the dams’ conditions and maintenance needs. 

Maine’s Dam Safety Program classifies all three dams as “high hazard,” meaning that if they fail human lives are at risk, and determined them to be in “unsatisfactory” condition. The lack of clarity from AIM makes acquiring the dams difficult, Bucksport town manager Susan Lessard told The Maine Monitor, because the towns don’t have enough information to plan for the associated maintenance and operation costs.

While Bucksport eyes ownership of the Silver Lake dam, a committee formed by Orland, Penobscot, Surrey and Blue Hill are hashing out a way to share ownership of the other two.

The towns are conducting a survey and hosting several public hearings to discuss the possible legislation. Each of the four towns’ hearings are from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with Orland gathering at the Alamoosook Lakeside Inn on Feb. 5, Surry at the Surry Elementary School gymnasium on Feb. 10, Blue Hill at the town hall auditorium on Feb. 12 and Penobscot at the Penobscot Community School on Feb. 13.

A meeting in Bucksport. Photo by Emmett Gartner.   

AIM is still in the 180-day consultation period mandated by state statute, according to David Madore, the DEP Deputy Commissioner. This began after the department accepted the company’s forfeiture petition on Oct. 18, 2024.

Bipartisan legislation introduced by Rep. Nina Milliken (D-Blue Hill) on behalf of the DEP would give towns more time to consider ownership of forfeited dams and require dam owners to submit more information on the dams’ conditions to the department and interested buyers.

“It feels really vital, frankly, to my community, all of Hancock County, that those dams remain in place,” Milliken told The Monitor. “And I want to be really transparent: I am an environmentalist. I think that often removing dams is a good idea, but [removing the three dams] would be like waking up in Augusta one day and the Kennebec River being gone.”

Milliken said the bill was crafted when she and other Bucksport-area legislators met with DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim to discuss the statute and its limitations. The bill expands on efforts from former state Rep. Ron Russell (D-Verona Island) to regulate dams, according to Milliken, and is the first of several bills she plans to introduce.

Aside from the DEP bill, L.D. 62, Milliken said she is working on bills that would: allow for quasi-municipal entities to take over dams; create a revolving loan fund that could be drawn on to cover maintenance costs for the most dilapidated, high-risk dams; strengthen the state’s Dam Safety Program and address the chronic underfunding, understaffing and weak enforcement actions outlined in a recent study and reporting from the The Monitor.

Milliken said she’s been working on the bills with a bipartisan group of legislators, including Rep. Steven M. Bishop (R-Bucksport), Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) and Sen. David Haggan (R-Penobscot), and emphasized the coalition’s sense of urgency and its cohesive approach.

If the dam forfeiture statute isn’t strengthened and AIM’s abandonment goes through, Milliken worries that it could set a precedent for owners of other deteriorating dams, leaving Maine communities who rely on the dammed lakes for property taxes and recreation revenue in the same tough situation as the Hancock County towns. 

“I feel like the common sense conclusion would be that other companies who own those [dilapidated] dams might see that this works and then also try to abandon them,” Milliken said.

The second week of the Trump administration brought a shakeup to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with the ousting of two of the agency’s top scientific advisory officials, according to NPR, allowing for incoming EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to shape the agency so it fits Trump's agenda to roll back environmental regulations.

Take a break from the chaos of the national headlines and join me for a discussion about Maine's dams at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport next Tuesday, Feb. 4, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., or online via Zoom. I’ll be focusing in part on the fate of the dams on Silver Lake, Alamoosook Lake and Toddy Pond and will be joined by engineer James Woidt, Bucksport town manager Susan Lessard and Orland selectperson Gina Bushong. Hope to see you there!

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