Maine’s biggest dam owner faces reckoning after another Penobscot River fish kill 10

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 17, 2026

The fish die-off that followed a Penobscot River dam shutdown in July rallied calls for stiffer regulations on the dam’s owner, which has been accused of repeatedly disrupting the water levels at a nationally renowned fishing and whitewater rafting destination. Brookfield Renewable, an offshoot of a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, is in the final stages of relicensing the Ripogenus Dam, about 30 miles west of Millinocket. The July 27 turbine shutdown, triggered by a broken transmission line cross-arm at McKay Station, followed a similar incident in 2023, and was catastrophic for juvenile landlocked salmon, the state fish.