EDDINGTON, Maine — July 23, 2013 — Two yellow bulldozers clamped down on the face of the hulking Veazie Dam on Monday, cracking open the concrete buttress that has separated Maine’s Penobscot River from the Atlantic Ocean for nearly 200 years.
The breach, the culmination of an innovative $62 million public-private partnership, is a critical step toward revitalizing the river by restoring endangered wild Atlantic salmon and other sea-running fish to the upstream waters where they were born.
But it is more than that. The destruction of the dam, Maine’s outermost gate to the sea, is about repair and revival of relationships between tribal people, conservationists, power companies, and sportsmen for whom the river is a lifeline, too.
“We are talking of breaching a dam, but . . . instead I think we are talking about repairing a breach,” said John Bullard, Northeast regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.
That is especially true for members of the Penobscot Indian Nation.
For them, the removal of the hydroelectric dam and the return of the salmon underscore a much larger dream for preserving the river.