Currently browsing… Priority Waters

  • Advocacy

    Let’s urge FERC to improve Kennebec dams plan

    It is estimated that just a couple thousand adult salmon return each spring to rivers in Maine — the only state that still has Atlantic salmon migrations.

    Draft environmental impact study should go further to improve fish passage and save Atlantic salmon “Every spring, for thousands of years, the rivers that empty into the North Atlantic Ocean turned silver with migrating fish. Tomcod and rainbow smelt swam out from beneath melting ice. Young eels found their way from the Sargasso Seas. Alewives…

  • Priority Waters

    Catching the window

    To me, there is no better sound to fall asleep to than that of moving water. It’s the white noise itself, but I also think it’s the knowing that water is nearby. When I have this luxury, it usually means that I just went fishing or am about to go fishing, or both, which is…

  • Dam Removal

    FERC plans sells Kennebec’s endangered Atlantic salmon short

    This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a Draft EIS affecting four hydroelectric dams on Maine’s Kennebec River. The FERC recommendations amount to incremental improvements over what is now a dire situation for Atlantic salmon in the Kennebec. We have tried the incremental approach before on rivers like the Connecticut, Merrimack, Saco, and Androscoggin.…

  • Restoration

    Reconnecting the Mettawee: Six dams down

    When it comes to long-term restoration projects, Erin Rodgers measures the passage of time not so much by clocks and calendars, but by kids. So it was when recently recounting a multi-year project on Vermont’s Mettawee River; Rodgers thought back to two big life moments to help her remember the project’s pace. “The Mettawee is…

  • Priority Waters

    Fishing the Olympic Peninsula

    Angling on the peninsula can be had year-round and is especially unique because of how dynamic the rivers are and how much they change from one season to the next.

    “So, where are you guys gonna fish tomorrow?” Everyone at the high top table went silent and stared at us. Mike and I exchanged glances and shifted in our bar stools. For the last twenty minutes or so, we’d tactfully avoided the question - and therefore having to answer it - while our friends went…