Maine

Callahan Mine site home to one of Maine’s earliest aquaculture projects

Published

2 months ago

November 1, 2024

The first restaurant to serve salmon raised in the flooded pit of the Callahan Mine Superfund site would be the historic Jed Prouty’s Inn and Tavern in Bucksport, biologist Bob Mant reported at a meeting of the Goose Pond Reclamation Society in the fall of 1972.

About 3,800 of the 4,200 juvenile Coho salmon had survived the summer, said Mant, and roughly half had reached a marketable size of between 10 and 12 ounces.

The 350,000 oysters that had been seeded were also growing nicely, added Mant, and seemed unbothered by the high levels of zinc in the water, which were double those in nearby Blue Hill Bay.

Mant’s experimental aquaculture project — one of the first of its kind in the state, along with an operation in Wiscasset — began just months after the last ore from the mine was extracted and the open pit was refilled with seawater.

Buildings on the site that once housed assay labs and mining equipment were now crammed with plastic trays of oyster spat and massive fiberglass vats containing thousands of salmon fry. The salmon and oysters would be started on land before being transferred to Goose Pond, where they would be suspended in nets and cages and grown to market size.

Not far from the experimental lab was the tailings pond, a massive pile of unwanted slurry at the mine site’s southern edge, on the banks of Marsh Creek. When it rained or snowed, heavy metals from the pile would leak into the creek and adjacent salt marsh — and into Goose Pond itself.

The idea for an aquaculture project in the former mine pit was the brainchild of Fred Beck, chief geologist for the Callahan Mining Corporation, who had been charged with overseeing the closure of the mine. Beck had recently traveled to Washington state, where he’d seen a pilot project run by Jon Lindbergh, son of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, growing salmon in Puget Sound.

“I thought that was kind of fascinating,” recalled Beck, sitting in his basement office in Yarmouth earlier this fall. “Why couldn’t the flooded open pit be used for doing net pen aquaculture, like they were doing out in Puget Sound?”

A potential deposit

Tiny, bucolic Brooksville is an unexpected place for a Superfund site. With a year-round population of less than a thousand residents, the town is perhaps better known for being the setting for Robert McCloskey’s 1952 children’s classic One Morning in Maine, or as the homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing, the revered grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement.

Famed organic farmers and authors Eliot Coleman and his wife Barbara Damrosch still live nearby, growing hardy vegetables in unheated greenhouses through the unrelenting Maine winter.

Perched on the northwest edge of Cape Rosier in the village of Harborside looking west into Penobscot Bay, Goose Pond spills out into Goose Cove, a small inlet nestled among some of Maine’s most staggeringly beautiful coastline.

Just across the water, with the tailings pond and bulldozers visible in the distance, birders have logged sightings of belted kingfishers, eagles, osprey, spotted sandpipers and hermit thrush. Walking paths thread their way through the woods on the pond’s eastern edge, now a 1,200-acre state park and nature sanctuary.

Beck came to Maine after abandoning a planned sailing trip around the world when his wife learned she was pregnant not long after the couple departed Wales.

After first taking a job with the Maine Geological Survey, Beck initially went to work as a consultant for Callahan before being hired as the company’s regional geologist. He spent his days in an office in Blue Hill, poring over old surveys and mining records, searching for unexplored or abandoned deposits and reporting his findings to the company’s office in New York.

Goose Pond was an obvious choice to go looking for a potential deposit, said Beck. The region had a history of mining going back to the late 1800s, and at one point was the state’s leading producer of base metals, with two mines, a smelter and even a stock exchange operating in Blue Hill.

The zinc and copper deposits in Harborside were discovered in the early 1880s. The Harborside Copper Mine, as it became known, produced around 10,000 tons of ore from three underground shafts between 1881 and 1883. The ore was barged across the bay to Castine, where they were piled on a dock and periodically picked up by coastal schooners to be brought to smelters in the south.

But metal prices faltered, and the boom was over almost as quickly as it began, with a final shipment of copper from the Douglass Mine in Blue Hill in 1918 marking the end of base metal mining in Maine for decades. The Harborside Copper Mine shut down in the late 1880s, and lay largely dormant until it was optioned by the Penobscot Mining Company of Toronto in 1956 and leased to Callahan a decade later.

Digging in a tidal estuary

Callahan determined that the only way to make the deposit profitable would be to extract the metals in an open pit, dug below the pond’s surface.

According to Beck, who is writing a book about the history of the Callahan Mine, the company planned to fund the project with proceeds from its Galena silver mine in northern Idaho, at the time one of the nation’s most productive silver mining operations.

The state of Maine owned the land beneath Goose Pond, which meant Callahan would need permission to drain and excavate it. Four state agencies approved Callahan’s plans and the State Supreme Court also signed off, as did lawmakers and then-Maine Governor John Reed, citing a promise of jobs and a million dollars in annual payroll. The law declared the mine to be “of public interest to the state.”

The law required Callahan to “return the water to the aforesaid tidal estuary upon termination of mining,” but made no mention of any other reclamation or funds.

A lease signed the following year between Callahan and the Maine Mining Bureau, the state agency responsible for permitting at the time, did require that the company work with the agency to rehabilitate the land. But the document had few details, requiring only that reclamation be “the subject of further discussion and negotiation between the parties.”

No money or testing of the soils was required in advance, nor was the company required to take any precautions to ensure the waste rock in the tailings pile didn’t leach toxins.

“It did give us some good jobs for three or four years, and that was it,” said John Gray, who worked as an assayer at the mine when it was in operation and whose family has lived in Brooksville for generations. “And then — I don’t think we really realized how much damage was done.”

Nationwide, mining law at the time was in its infancy. Most regulations applied only to coal mines, which had seen a number of high-profile disasters over the years. It wasn’t until 1966, the year the Maine Legislature gave Callahan approval to drain the estuary, that Congress passed a law establishing procedures for developing safety and health standards for metal and nonmetal mines. It would be another decade before The Mine Safety and Health Act was passed.

Locals in Brooksville were largely supportive of the mine, said Gray, who still lives nearby. An electrician by trade, Gray took a job at the assayer for Callahan, submerging ground rock samples in chemical baths to coax the metals out in solution, then drying them under large heaters and reporting back to the mine manager. Assayers could turn around a sample in an hour, if necessary.

“It was a pretty good job,” said Gray, akin to working at one of the larger paper mills. “It was not quite as good pay as that, but it was pretty good for the area.”

Not everyone was excited about the prospect of digging for heavy metals in a tidal estuary.

Opposition to the project was led by realist painter Albert Sandecki, who had purchased a summer home abutting the Callahan property in 1964.

In a letter shortly after the company began digging, Sandecki warned of the consequences.

“The future value of the entire area is jeopardized by the fact that the Callahan Corporation has not been required by state or local officials to provide a contract or performance bond to insure restorative measures,” Sandecki wrote.

“It is common documented knowledge from other states that open pit mines present these problems, and there is no reason to assume that this project will be any different in its resultant destruction to scenery, wildlife, and future values of the area.”

‘That’s the way it was’

After getting approval from the state, Callahan quickly set to work constructing two dams — one at the mouth of the estuary to prevent the tides from entering and another at the head of the pond to divert the fresh water drainage from 1,600 acres of adjacent forest and salt marsh. In early 1968, the company drained the water and set about digging a pit that would ultimately descend 340 feet, covering nearly 10 acres of land.

It was evident early on that the mine was creating environmental problems. Without tidal currents to periodically scour the cove, silt was settling in the area below the pond, Beck wrote in a paper in 1970.

Residents began complaining of wells going dry in the area around the pond, or being infiltrated with saltwater. Tests of clams and other shellfish in the cove revealed higher than expected heavy metal content, but since the area had not been studied in advance, there was no established baseline.

“It can only be assumed that the mine is one of the contributors,” Beck wrote.

Brooksville escaped the scourge of acid mine drainage, which can occur in base metal mines and devastate the surrounding environment, only because the metals in Harborside happened to occur in a matrix of talc carbonate, which immediately buffered any acid produced by the surrounding metals. But this was largely luck, as no testing was done in advance.

“In hindsight, of course, we see things that should have been done that weren’t by both government and industry,” said Beck.

“It’s required now by the [Maine Department of Environmental Protection] to do a lot of testing of soils, of water, of groundwater, surface water and so forth before you even dig a shovelful of dirt. But that wasn’t part of the equation back in those days. It’s too bad it wasn’t, but that’s the way it was.”

Callahan built settling ponds and a pipe to help disperse the silt and tried recycling the effluent water in the on-site processing mill, with the hopes of creating a closed system that could be a model for other underwater mines. The company also drilled new wells for those whose wells had gone dry, moving some away farther from the sea.

But the tailings pond, where unwanted slurry was dumped after metals were floated out, remained unlined on the bottom and open to the elements, allowing zinc and copper and lead to leach into the adjacent salt marsh and soils. Waste rock piles and ore processing areas had no protective lining underneath or caps on top, unthinkable under modern mining regulations.

“I’m sure there are people who think I’m an evil person,” said Beck, whose company, Maine Environmental Laboratory, now helps state agencies and nonprofits test soil and rocks for mineral content.

“I’ve always been a strong environmentalist. Most geologists, I think, are,” he said. “Callahan, I think, did their best under the conditions that existed at the time.”

A new purpose

After operating for four years and extracting 5 million tons of rock (including 800,000 tons of valuable ore), Callahan shut down the mine in Harborside, having exhausted the deposit. The company attempted some revegetation of the site, hiring a landscape renewal specialist who experimented with a variety of plants, including zinc-tolerant red fescue grasses from Wales.

But the plants struggled to take, said Beck, who had been given the unenviable task of managing the cleanup after the mine manager left for a job in Brazil.

Maine had passed a law in 1969, a year into Callahan’s operation, requiring mining companies to post bonds and submit a comprehensive site rehabilitation plan before beginning mining operations. But Callahan had been grandfathered in and was thus not required to submit any reclamation money to the state.

Callahan offered to remove the concrete dam and dredge the cove as part of the requirements of its mining lease, but state agencies initially refused, fearing that disturbing the area and allowing tidal flow would make any metal contamination worse.

Eventually, Beck said, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife agreed that part of the dam should be removed to allow for some tidal flow. Photos of the day the water flowed in show the sea cascading hundreds of feet into the mine pit, a towering, ephemeral waterfall.

Once the pond had refilled, Beck wondered whether there was a way to repurpose the mine site. The minerals leaching into the pit from the mine site were sulfides, insoluble in seawater, meaning the water itself was free from toxic metals, which Beck and his team confirmed repeatedly with tests. He wondered whether salmon might do well in the pit’s deep, cold waters.

Bob Mant, a promising young biologist trained at Princeton University and at the University of Maine, agreed to head up the project, which he named Maine Sea Farms.

In 1974, two years after the mine closed, Callahan, which had initially backed the project, struggled to find additional investors, according to documents Beck gave to The Maine Monitor, and sold the site to Mant for $25,000.

The experiment became, for a time, the largest pen salmon operation on the eastern seaboard, handling millions of fish, according to testimony Bob’s wife Linda gave to Congress in 1977. The on-site laboratory equipment was repurposed to test for metals in the fish, and Mant hired two local men to help him run the operation.

The salmon and oysters were repeatedly tested for heavy metals but found to have escaped contamination, likely because the minerals in which the metals occurred were insoluble in water, settling instead into the silt below, said Beck.

The fish were sold to restaurants as far south as Boston, said Beck, who ate a few of them himself.

But Mant was a better biologist than he was a businessman, said Beck, and struggled to keep the business afloat; Maine Sea Farms lasted just five years before going bankrupt. The equipment was sold off and the buildings eventually torn down.

For years after that the mine was mostly quiet, said Gray. People would walk through the site and pick up shiny pieces of ore, and children occasionally played on the tailings pond.

“It was kind of fun,” said Gray, “And nobody seemed to get hurt, so it was pretty good.”

A cautionary tale

In 2002, three decades after the Callahan mine closed and after many years of testing, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the former mine and salmon farm as a Superfund site. Initially funded by taxes on petroleum and chemical companies, the goal of the Superfund program was to create a dedicated fund for cleaning up hazardous waste, even when a responsible party couldn’t be identified.

Cleanup work began in Brooksville in 2011. Contaminated rock and soil was consolidated, and a new system was designed and constructed to manage the tailings. The tailings pond was stabilized and lined and a cover was installed to help prevent heavy metals from leaching out when it rains or snows.

Drainage systems were installed and erosion controls put in place, and nearby properties were rid of soil contaminated with PCBs, which are thought to have stemmed from the dumping of electrical transformers on the land after Maine Sea Farms closed.

In the intervening decades, Maine mining law changed dramatically. Companies are now required to conduct years of water and soil testing before applying for mining permits, and must set aside funds for reclamation in advance. It has been more than 40 years since the state has had any active metal mines, and many experts consider Maine to have the most stringent mining laws in the United States.

Those laws were written in large part out of a desire not to repeat what happened with Callahan. During discussion of the most recent mining law changes, which were approved earlier this year, proponents and detractors alike invoked Callahan as a cautionary tale.

The last phase of the cleanup, which the EPA announced in August, is expected to end in 2026 with a final cost of around $55 million, and will include dredging the mouth of the estuary at Goose Cove and covering a large pile of waste rock.

The site is now owned by Smith Cove Preservation Trust, a nonprofit based in Ohio. An officer of the trust, James Beneson, told The Weekly Packet in August that his family has been visiting the area for decades and would like to see the property reforested and restored “to some sort of wild state.”

Today the pond itself bears little evidence of the scar beneath its surface, apart from signs warning those looking to cool off in its waters to swim at their own risk. A pocket wetland has been reestablished near the tailings impoundment.

Visitors to Holbrook Island Sanctuary, which occupies the pond’s eastern shore, could be forgiven for not noticing the Superfund site at all, save for the occasional clink of bulldozers in the distance.

“Nature in many ways is remarkably resilient,” EPA representative Ed Hathaway told a crowd gathered in Brooksville this summer. “In many cases, if you remove the real toxic threats, nature will regenerate.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.

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Maine

Beloved Maine restaurant engulfed by fire will do ‘whatever it takes’ to reopen

Published

7 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

Beloved Maine restaurant engulfed by fire will do ‘whatever it takes’ to reopen

A mainstay on Ogunquit, Maine’s Marginal Way since 1963, the Oarweed Restaurant says it will do “whatever it takes” to reopen for the 2025 season after a blaze destroyed much of the building Saturday night.

“Even though there is devastation and sadness, there is hope… rainbows, rum punches, stuffed potatoes, and more hope, for 2025 opening day!” the restaurant posted on Facebook Sunday.

Firefighters were called to Perkins Cove, a historic fishing cove and top tourist destination, at 7:17 p.m. Saturday for a reported structure fire on Perkins Cove Road, according to Seacoastonline.

When they arrived, they discovered heavy fire in Uniques and Antiques, the business that abuts the Oarweed, and the restaurant.

Amid freezing temperatures, a second alarm fire was declared and several surrounding fire departments in southern Maine responded.

Uniques and Antiques, known for its sale of Christmas heirlooms, posted on Facebook Saturday night: “This is a heartbreaking shock and we appreciate everyone who has reached out. We ask for continued prayers for all, including our neighbors at Oarweed Restaurant and our other friends in the Cove. Thank you to first responders. We will update more when we can.”

The Oarweed, a classic Maine seafood restaurant that first opened in the summer of 1963, was closed for the season when the fire struck.

In a hopeful Facebook post Sunday, just a mere hours after the blaze was put out, the restaurant said employees will be “working hard” for the 2025 season. They cited cubing potatoes for chowder, prepping the “blueberry splash” and loading up the bar, despite the devastation caused by the fire.

“Everyone is safe and ready to do whatever it takes to make our beloved Oarweed ready to go on!” the Oarweed wrote. “Thank you to all for your support and love.”

In March, Real Simple magazine named the town of Ogunquit the No. 1 vacation destination of 2024.

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Maine

Ace Flagg is ready to be a star again in Maine

Published

15 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

Ace Flagg is ready to be a star again in Maine

Ace Flagg is a power forward on the Greensboro Day School boys basketball team. Flagg will attend the University of Maine next year. Auden Forsberg/Greensboro Day School

It was a hard decision to make. For a while, at least.

The summer before Ace Flagg’s senior year was nearing its end, as was the time to make a decision on his college basketball future. He had plenty of options to choose from — Division I colleges from across the country had made their pitches.

One, though, always stood out.

“When I started weighing all the options and everything that it meant to me, I think it became pretty obvious, pretty quickly,” he said. “I knew I wanted to come home.”

It’s been nearly two months since the Newport native announced his commitment to the University of Maine men’s basketball team.

It made news around the country, and fans celebrated when Flagg made his homecoming official. After all, Ace and his twin brother, Cooper — a freshman star at Duke — have captivated the state since their high school debuts at Nokomis Regional High three years ago.

“I liked everything about it. It was great to see the attention it got, and all the support and love from all the Mainers,” he said. “It was amazing. It helped me so much. It made the whole thing a lot easier. I’ve been blessed to be able to play in Maine and have the support of everyone there.”

Flagg feels fortunate, as does his future team.

“I just love what he brings to the table, in terms of his toughness, his basketball IQ, his inside-out skill set,” Maine coach Chris Markwood said. “He’s our type of guy. He’s a Maine guy, hard-working, tough, hard-nosed and a great feel for the game.”

The announcement, though, was only part of what’s been an eventful season for Flagg. He’s also at his third school in four years, playing his senior year for Greensboro Day School in Greensboro, North Carolina. He’s adjusting to life without Cooper, on the court without his brother for the first time.

Ace Flagg averaged 12.7 points and 7.2 rebounds through his first 15 games for Greensboro Day School. Auden Forsberg/Greensboro Day School

Everything has been new: the environment, teammates, coaches and friends. He’s had to learn a new game, one that’s going to better prepare him for the college level that awaits him, and embrace a new role as a team leader.

“So far, so good,” Flagg said in a phone interview this week. “I wouldn’t say I was anxious. More just interested … to see what it would be like.

“It’s been a smooth transition, and I honestly feel like I’ve been here longer than I have.”

‘He’s unique’

Flagg said Greensboro reminds him more of the schools he grew up attending than Montverde Academy in Florida did.

“It feels a lot more like a public school, almost,” he said. “Greensboro has a more open kind of feel to it. … (There are) a lot of local kids, and not a lot of kids from all over the country.”

The kid from Maine, however, can only blend in so much.

“They do like to call me a Yankee, that is true,” he said. “They like to try to be country boys, but I tell them north is country, south isn’t. Which they don’t like.”

Flagg has made it a point to ingratiate himself with not just the team, but the community. Several of his closest friends aren’t basketball players. When Greensboro coach Freddy Johnson hosted a rec league with teams of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, he asked Ace to work with a couple of the teams. Flagg instead spent hours working with all six.

“He’s unique,” Johnson said. “I like being around him, because he’s just such a good kid.”

Cooper Flagg, left, and his brother, Ace, share a laugh during a youth basketball camp on Aug. 10 in Orono. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

He’s also had to adjust to not sharing the court with Cooper for the first time since middle school. Flagg said there’s now more on his shoulders, which can help him as he prepares for college.

“Playing with Cooper makes the game easier,” Flagg said. “After playing with him for so long, not having him just makes everything tougher. You have to do a lot more on your own when you don’t have a player like him with you. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s going to push me to be even better than I would have been before.”

Being Cooper’s brother, let alone twin, creates a shadow that is tough to escape, given Cooper’s status as the country’s most coveted college prospect. Ace, however, said there were “no hard feelings at all” on his part as he watches the buzz around Cooper soar.

“I’m super proud of him and everything he’s doing. He deserves everything that he’s got, he’s worked so hard. Seeing all this attention for him is just amazing,” he said. “I want him to succeed more than maybe he does. I have nothing but love for him and hope nothing but the best for him.”

Growing his game

Johnson didn’t have much of a scouting report on Flagg when he came aboard in July.

“I really didn’t know much about him, other than he was a good basketball player,” said Johnson, who earlier this month became the sixth high school coach to reach 1,200 career wins. “He has a lot of respect from a lot of different people.”

Johnson quickly saw the tools Flagg had, and the set of abilities that have helped him average 12.7 points and 7.2 rebounds per game (as of Tuesday) while leading the 13-2 Bengals in minutes.

“His feet are unbelievable,” he said. “He has such good movement, he knows how to fake and get guys up. He can go around a 6-9 guy. … He passes like a point guard.”

It’s been a season of adjustment and acclimation, however. A pure forward who played as a big man with Nokomis and Montverde Academy in Florida, the 6-foot-7 Flagg has been playing more on the perimeter for a Greensboro team that likes to run and has four players around the center playing positions based on matchups.

“I’ve started to play out further, closer maybe to a 3 (small forward) than a 4 (power forward), and playing a lot out on the wing,” he said. “It’s one of the things that I needed. Playing that 4, 5 role at 6-(foot-)7, it doesn’t usually work out. I knew I needed to start transitioning outside and sharpen up my skills there.”

Ace Flagg looks for an open teammate while playing for Montverde Academy during a game in Portland on Jan. 6. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

It didn’t click right away. Flagg was unselfish to a fault while playing with his new teammates, and Johnson spoke to him about taking over with the ball.

“Around game 5, 6, I reminded him that he needed to be more assertive,” he said. “He wanted to keep all his teammates happy by sharing the ball, and I explained to him that we’re not running five plays for him to catch the ball and throw it to somebody else. We want him to take it and score.”

The chat worked.

“If you saw him play the first three games and you saw him play the last three games, he’s a totally different player,” Johnson said.

A home state spotlight

It’s not as if Ace doesn’t generate his own hype and attention. Johnson said attendance at Greensboro games, both home and away, has climbed, and that the opportunity to cheer or jeer the player they’ve seen in stories and video clips online is likely what’s brought the fans out.

“He has his fan section that comes to cheer against him,” Johnson said. “We draw more on the road than we ever have.”

When he committed to Maine on Oct. 30, the news stretched beyond the state and even landed as a headline on ESPN’s homepage. He’s been in the spotlight for a while, but Flagg said those moments don’t get old.

“It’s definitely a little weird,” he said. “Growing up, you’re always watching games on ESPN. Seeing yourself on there is definitely a strange feeling.”

Flagg announced his Maine commitment on Instagram, sharing a SportsCenter post, and the post has garnered 215,000 likes and 710 comments. News quickly reverberated around the state and zipped through the Orono campus.

“When the news hit, that was the big talk around the rec (center). ‘Ace is coming, Ace is coming,’” said Landen Chase, 19, a UMaine sophomore. “I had a friend who texted me, he doesn’t know a lot about basketball, but he texted me and his whole family was curious about why Ace was coming and what happened. It was cool. It was all around campus, everyone was talking about it.”

It’s buzz that hasn’t been there for a program that went 28-105 between the 2017-18 and 2021-22 seasons.

Ace Flagg drives to the basket while playing for the Greensboro Day School boys basketball team. Flagg will attend the University of Maine next year. Auden Forsberg/Greensboro Day School

“They want to win (at Maine). It’s a winning mentality there,” Chase said. “People feel like, with Ace, this is going to step up our program and make games more enjoyable, and give us a better chance to win.”

That’s Markwood’s interest as he continues to try to build Maine into a contender in America East. Sure, having more eyeballs on the program is nice, and Markwood knows the Black Bears’ profile got a boost when Flagg signed.

“There’s obviously a major buzz behind him and obviously his brother, Coop. In Maine, those two guys, everybody’s watching them grow and evolve in the highest level,” he said. “I think everybody’s excited for Ace and for us, that we’re able to get a player of Ace’s caliber to come back home and represent our state.”

What Markwood is most interested in is what Flagg can do on the court, and how he can help continue the upward trend of a team that’s gone 36-39 since Markwood took over in 2022.

“He’s got a really good knack inside, he grew up as a big man, so he’s got great touch around the rim from 15 feet and in, and now he’s really added and developed his game around the perimeter,” Markwood said. “You’ve seen the evolution, and he’s still only scratching the surface.”

That’s Flagg’s focus as well.

“I’ve never played basketball in my life with the intention of not winning,” he said. “I’m trying to bring everything I can to win. That’s what I want to do.”

The pressure’s already there. Markwood said he won’t want to add to it.

“I want Ace to enjoy the process on his own journey, at his own speed,” he said. “I don’t want him to feel like he’s got to come in right away and be Michael Jordan. He’s got to come in and be himself.”

Whatever expectations await him, Flagg knows he’s ready for them.

“I look at it as a positive,” he said. “Being able to be recognized by anyone is a blessing. … I would never take it for granted. I think every day that I’m blessed for everything I have.”

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Maine

What did Hallowell learn from the December 2023 flood?

Published

23 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

What did Hallowell learn from the December 2023 flood?

Sam Joyall, co-owner of Rusticators Emporium on Water Street in downtown Hallowell, points out Thursday the high-water mark of last year’s December flood, the fifth-highest in the city’s history. Joyall says he noticed the water rising fast on the morning of Dec. 19, 2023, and he quickly called his wife. “I did a quick U-turn around, she booked it up there, and then we spent the rest of the day watching as that graph kept projecting it to go higher and higher for flooding.” Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

7:30 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023

Kennebec River at 17.3 feet: moderate flood stage

HALLOWELL — Power was out on Water Street, and Sam Joyall knew there was a cold spell coming. He drove from his home in Richmond to insulate his storefront, The Rusticators Emporium, from the dropping temperatures early Tuesday morning.

Joyall passed the boat launch on the southern end of downtown. It hadn’t rained for almost a day, but water encroached on the launch parking lot. Noted.

He continued on to his store, two blocks north of the launch, insulating supplies in hand.

“By the time I had stuffed the doors and was like, ‘OK, this is all I came here for,’ and was leaving, I noticed how — in that brief period — substantially higher the water was at the boat landing area,” he said.

A slow-moving storm had dropped 4-8 inches of rain across much of Maine over the previous two days, melting snowpack and quickly increasing river levels.

Joyall was seeing the beginning of what would become a historic flood. A year ago this week, riverside communities across central Maine suffered damage they will remember for decades — and as the climate changes, the storms that led to the flooding are expected to only increase in intensity.

It’s a time the communities can’t afford to forget. That December morning, experts say, will be repeated more frequently in the years ahead.

Front Street, which borders the river and lies much lower than the rest of downtown, had flooded the evening before. Hallowell’s bulkhead — where the famous colorful Adirondack chairs sit for much of the year — was already covered by several feet of water. The Kennebec River was rising by nearly a foot every hour.

Joyall called his wife, Lexi, who checked on the river’s flood gage predictions — and it did not look pretty. The duo, who co-own the store, scrambled to take action.

“I did a quick U-turn around, she booked it up there, and then we spent the rest of the day watching as that graph kept projecting it to go higher and higher for flooding,” Joyall said. “We were just in the shop, doing whatever it was we could — we took out some of our most expensive items, fearing that we were probably going to see some water come into the shop by that point.”

Floodwater soon lapped at the doorsteps of Water Street storefronts and completely inundated Front Street basement spaces.

And the river was still rising.

The town center of Hallowell was unreachable on the afternoon of Dec. 19, 2023, with both sides of Route 201 closed and cars coming from Gardiner being directed to turn around. Emily Duggan/Kennebec Journal file

10:30 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023

Kennebec River at 19.27 feet: major flood stage

Joyall spent the rest of the morning moving merchandise and watching the flood gage read higher and higher. Business owners up and down Water Street had the same idea — many scrambled to get their belongings to higher ground. Upstairs, up the hill — anything would do.

Down the street, Joyall saw volunteers, including Mayor George Lapointe, moving stock out of Vignettes of Maine — a gift shop near the corner of Water and Wharf streets — as the business took on water.

Chiseled into the building across Wharf Street, notches marking Hallowell’s biggest floods from the past 200 years loomed over Lapointe’s parked pickup truck. Nine months later, this flood’s high-water point would be marked on that building — the fifth-highest ever recorded in Hallowell and the highest since 1987.

Joyall called across Water Street to make sure Michel-Paul Cyr, who owns Michel Paul Artist Studio, had all the help he needed while water crept up to his gallery’s back deck. Lapointe jumped from business to business, asking owners how he could help.

On Front Street, the Quarry Tap Room’s back patio was submerged in 8 feet of water. Easy Street Lounge was filled with water “to the rafters,” and it took months for owner Bruce Mayo to rebuild and restock, Lapointe said.

Joyall said he stayed at The Rusticators Emporium for several more hours, watching the water slowly rise outside. He said the store’s lights and heat, which had been out since the day before, flickered back on, even before the water stopped climbing.

“Oh, this is a reverse Titanic situation here,” Joyall said to himself.

9:30 a.m., Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023

Kennebec River at 17.97 feet: moderate flood stage

With power back on the western side of Water Street, City Manager Gary Lamb powered up the city’s computers and opened City Hall doors for business for the first time in two days.

The river had already noticeably dropped from its peak of 22.49 feet around 9 p.m. Tuesday, but roads were still impassable on the southern side of downtown until about midday, according to a memo Lamb wrote recapping the flood. Public works employees removed barricades and began cleanup, using the city’s snowblower’s power broom.

A swollen Kennebec River floods buildings on the back side of Water Street in Augusta after a severe rainstorm in December 2023. File photo courtesy of Dave Dostie

Much of downtown was covered in inches-thick silt that was “greasy as heck,” Lapointe said. Granite City Park, which had been underwater for about 36 hours, was caked in sediment. The building housing Vignettes of Maine and what was then Traverse Coffee Co. was lifted slightly off its foundation and required substantial structural work. The Quarry Tap Room’s outdoor stage had floated over a railing and onto Front Street. Several buildings in the southern part of downtown were evacuated due to a propane tank leak near Café de Bangkok. Floats from the boat launch had traveled downstream, despite being stored across the Water Street, away from the river. Merrill’s Bookshop lost eight tons of books.

Buildings on the western side of Water Street were mostly spared from the worst of the flooding, including Berry & Berry Floral, where Lapointe said he saw a “small puddle” inside during the worst of the flooding. The Rusticators Emporium, on the western side of the street, was kept mostly dry, too.

But on the eastern side of Water Street, closer to the river, flood waters were slow to recede, and power was still out through Wednesday night.

Lamb contacted Central Maine Power early Thursday morning, wondering when electricity would be restored and hoping businesses wouldn’t freeze up during the impending cold snap. He was told by customer service representatives that building owners and tenants would need to sign CMP’s post-flood power restoration form, signaling they understood the risks associated with turning power back on.

“Because so many of the services were inundated, they required this form to be filled out and signed by a master electrician who’d actually done an inspection,” Lamb said. “For obvious reasons, safety reasons; it could start a fire or hurt somebody.”

Lamb said he didn’t know about the form before the flood — buildings downtown hadn’t flooded this badly since he became city manager — but that city staff and other volunteers jumped in to contact relevant people as quickly as possible. Power was back on by Saturday morning.

“The critical part was people were going to have to drain their buildings,” Lamb said. “It was getting much colder after the waters receded and buildings were going to freeze up because they had gone for four or five days without power, and most of those places are relatively uninsulated. We were ecstatic that, right before Christmas, we got the power back on that Saturday.”

11 a.m., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024

Kennebec River at 6.55 feet: well below flood stage

Almost exactly a year later, city officials’ fears about another river flood were growing. Conditions were similar to the December 2023 event: A powerful storm capable of dropping several inches of rain, rising temperatures, high winds that knocked out power to thousands and the potential for substantial snowmelt.

Lamb watched the flood gage predictions closely, and Lapointe mentioned in a City Council meeting earlier in the week that the city may have to deal with significant flooding again.

No such flood came.

But Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel said events like last December’s will only get more severe with climate change.

“We’re much more uncertain about the frequency part,” Birkel, also a research assistant professor at UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, said. “However, as climate warms, we have seen an increase in the intensity of storms, and in particular with the amount of precipitation that these storms are producing.”

The Dec. 17-18, 2023, storm produced more than 3 inches of rain in most of the Kennebec River watershed. Warm, strong winds from the southeast created an “atmospheric river” event, which ushered massive amounts of rainfall, especially in central and western Maine.

When added to snowmelt, Birkel said, the conditions for widespread river flooding downstream were ideal.

“We have seen that a cold-season cyclone can produce this much flooding and damage, and in a warming world, there’s increased risk,” he said. “And so as we prepare in the future, we have to bear that in mind and incorporate that into our planning, especially at the state and municipal level.”

Lapointe said, while Hallowell does not plan on building a seawall to keep floodwaters out, city officials can take some steps to improve emergency response and prepare for future flooding events.

He said he and other city leaders should lean on the U.S. Geological Survey’s river gage — which Joyall watched intently during the flood and which Lamb said was “worth its weight in gold” — as a useful resource during floods. He said he would also like to standardize the city’s automatic emergency notification system for downtown businesses and residents and learn more about flood prediction, so the city is not scrambling to respond.

The water level from last year’s December flood is carved in a granite corner piece of the building at the intersection of Water and Central streets in downtown Hallowell. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Lapointe said it took two to three months for downtown Hallowell to feel normal after the December flood. Several businesses were closed for extended periods of time, and others never came back.

Some received aid from a City Council-approved relief fund, which directed $50,000 to businesses, with a cap of $2,000 per business. Others got help from private fundraising: One Quarry Tap Room employee’s husband raised more than $10,000 for the staff’s lost wages.

Vision Hallowell — a downtown support organization of which Joyall was recently appointed president — distributed more than $17,000 to downtown businesses following a monthslong fundraising campaign with other Hallowell community groups. The city matched that fundraising with another $17,000, which also went out to businesses impacted by the storm.

Lapointe said it would be easy for the city to beat itself up over its response to the flood. Not all business owners and tenants on Water and Front streets were on the city’s emergency contact list. Power restoration took longer than hoped. Lamb faced criticism for not invoking the city’s emergency management ordinance — which would have convened an eight-person committee of city leaders to coordinate response to the flood — but Lamb said the committee had never met, was not trained in emergency response and likely would not have been any more effective.

But above all the controversy and frustration, Lapointe said Hallowell should be proud of how it responded: The community came together to support its downtown, he said, in a relatively short amount of time.

“When there’s only so much you can do, people help out,” he said.

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