Welcome!

This website is dedicated to information about the Brunswick Dam and more generally the Androscoggin River in preparation for coming discussions and public hearings on the recertification of the dam. Our goal is to provide stakeholders with centrally located and easily accessible information to facilitate informed, productive discussions. This website is a work in progress, so please keep that in mind as you read through the information.

In the coming months, this website will be populated with information about a range of topics, including a comprehensive history of the Androscoggin River and the Brunswick Dam, how the dam affects the fish runs, regional ecology, the local economy, energy generated, glossary of technical terms and any other relevant information that our contributors send us. If you have any information you would like to share (scientific articles, histories, data sets, photos, news clippings, etc.) please visit our submissions page.

The Brunswick Dam license was issued in 1979 and is coming up for recertification in 2029. It is a hydroelectric dam located at the head of tide on the lower Androscoggin River bordering Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. This decades-long license is coming up for its first renewal, and we wish to offer accurate and thorough information to facilitate informed debate in the recertification discussions.

Please subscribe in the left side box to stay up to date on events and developments. If you know anyone that might be interested please share our address (https://courses.bowdoin.edu/brunswick-dam-fish-passage/).

Brunswick Dam Fish Ladder Design Blocks River Herring

This is a piece contributed by John Lichter about how the fish passage at Brunswick Dam is inadequate. The graph shows river herring passage in the Androscoggin compared to two other sites with some dam removals and updated fish passages.

Figure 1.  River herring passage at Brunswick on the Androscoggin River, Damariscotta Mills, and Benton Falls on the Sebasticook River between 2000-2023 in millions of fish passed. Estimates of potential river herring production are 2.7 million for the Androscoggin, 1 million for Damariscotta Mills, and 5.3 million for the Sebasticook. By 2009, two dams had been removed and three fish lifts installed on the remaining dams in the Sebasticook/Kennebec system allowing passage of millions of river herring. By 2017, the Damariscotta Mills fishway had been reconstructed allowing passage of ~1 million alewives each year into a single lake. The Androscoggin, however, has been left behind with inadequate fish passage. The fishway at Brunswick has only passed 71,087 river herring on average each year between 2000 and 2023, only 2.6% of its potential productivity. Also, very few American shad are able to navigate the Brunswick fishway (data not shown).

Save the Andro also frames the issue here.

Video – News Center Maine: Conservation group urges removal or redesign of Brunswick-Topsham dam