PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 2, 2022
Brookfield Renewable Power, a subsidiary of $600 billion Ontario-based global asset company Brookfield Asset Management, which owns most of the dams in Maine argued in regulatory filings posted Thursday that the Mills administration’s favored solutions for the rehabilitation of fish runs in the Kennebec River will be counterproductive and risk shutting down a paper mill. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is considering whether to allow the federal relicensing of the Shawmut Dam in Fairfield to operate for the next half century. Brookfield said there was no evidence that a fishway proposed by Maine’s Department of Marine Resources would be effective in helping endangered Atlantic salmon and other river-run fish swim past the dam to reach their spawning grounds. Four Maine conservation groups have sued Brookfield in federal court over alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act at the four dams.