KENNEBEC JOURNAL • May 5, 2022
For more than 50 years I have been a resident of Benton. I am a Republican, a retired selectman and town treasurer. I am concerned for the health of all Maine waters and, especially, the Kennebec River. As Benton’s Alewife Warden I observe effective fish passage benefitting people and wildlife in the Sebasticook River. Along the river in the spring, bald eagles gather in greater concentrations than anywhere else on the east coast, and seals swim from the ocean all the way to Benton to feast on alewives. This is the way Maine’s rivers should be: alive and productive. It is why I find Brookfield Renewable’s behavior at its four dams between Waterville and Skowhegan so abhorrent. Brookfield needs to sell its four dams. The people, fish and wildlife of the Kennebec region would benefit greatly from a settlement like that on the Penobscot where conservation groups purchased and removed two dams and decommissioned and bypassed a third. ~ Richard Lawrence, Benton