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GARDINER — The Gardiner Public Library, 152 Water St., will host a special presentation by Steve Brooke — “Cobbosseecontee: On the Edge of Restoration” — from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 23.
An Upstream activist, Brooke will speak about the history of the important waterway and what is happening today to secure fish passage. Dammed at its head of tide in 1761, Cobboseecontee Stream is the largest coastal watershed in Maine (after Presumpscot River/Sebago Lake) still impassible to native migratory fish.
A tributary of the Kennebec River and upper Merrymeeting Bay, the Cobboseecontee watershed includes the communities of Gardiner, West Gardiner, Litchfield, Richmond, Winthrop, Manchester, Monmouth, Readfield and Hallowell. It contains 20.3 square miles of lakes and ponds, the largest being Cobboseecontee, Maranacook and Annabessacook.
Working from 1998 to 2004, a consortium of area residents, conservation groups and state and federal agencies secured $125,000 in funding for the engineering studies, legal permits and construction contracts to breach and remove the first dam in the watershed, the 180 year old Gardiner Paperboard dam in downtown Gardiner.
Brooke was project coordinator of the Kennebec Coalition during the decommissioning and removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Augusta in 1999.
Since retiring from the State Planning Office, he works with Upstream, a Gardiner non-profit working to return river herring to the Cobbossee watershed.
For more information, call 207-582-0213, email upstreamcobbossee@gmail.com, or visit facebook.com/alewivesupstreamcobbosseecontee or _https://sites.google.com/view/upstreamcobbossee.
PHOTO: Cobbosseecontee Stream as seen in West Gardiner. (Maureen Milliken photo)
