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BY LARRY GRARD
Staff Writer Tuesday, July 22, 2008

enlarge Staff photo by Jim Evans

DALLAIRE STREET IRE: W. Elery Keene, right, fires off an accusation that riverbank monitoring has been too infrequent while during a meeting of Dallaire Street residents Monday. Removal of the Halifax Dam in Winslow has been halted by recent heavy rain. At left is Rep. Kenneth Fletcher, R-Winslow, and Jane Edwards.

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WINSLOW -- Dismantling of the Fort Halifax Dam remained on hold Monday as area residents and a town planning board member differed with the company hired to monitor the Sebasticook River's slope.

An angry W. Elery Keene stood on Dallaire Street with the residents who were evacuated from their homes Friday when the ground shifted. They fired questions at Sebago Technics engineer Dick Reynolds, who came to the site to handle them.

"The planning board conditions said '24-hour monitoring,'" Keene said to Reynolds. "You're in violation."

Reynolds replied that the dam breach and drawdown has gone as planned.

"We have a pretty good idea what's going on down there," he said, "and to monitor several times a day, I don't believe would increase the stability of that slope."

Dam owner FPL Energy has put the drawdown on hold, at least until today, to allow the river to recede from the rain, said FPL spokesman F. Allen Wiley. The company put a steel sheet in the opening to impede the Sebasticook's flow, he said.

Standing in a circle near the site of the old Halifax Street School, Keene, two dozen residents and town officials asked Reynolds why there was a gap of seven or more hours between the time that monitors detected a quarter-inch shift in the bank, and when residents were evacuated at 11:30 p.m. Friday.

Reynolds had told the group that Sebago Technics instruments monitor soil movement around the clock, but check on measurements only three times daily.

Homes on Dallaire Street were built on fill material placed there by a paper company after the dam was built 100 years ago. The homes rest high above the river, near a steep embankment.

Jerry Saint Amand, town council chairman, urged more vigilance of the slope.

"We just had an indication of what happens when there is a blip, and some red flags are going up here," Saint Amand said.

Rick Plante, standing yards away from the 9 Dallaire Street home he grew up in, shared the concern of others on the street. Plante's mother, Theresa, still lives there.

"Here we are having all this rain, and you guys are just pussyfooting around, watching it three times a day?" Plante asked.

Plante also pointed out the presence of what he called a crack in his mother's backyard. Plante, who mows the lawn, said that the crack -- about two to three inches wide and six inches deep -- did not exist prior to the dam's breaching Wednesday.

Bob Estes, a Sebago Technics geologist, speculated otherwise.

"I think it's been there for quite some time," Estes said. "Those were there long before the drawdown occurred."

FPL breached the dam because it was a cheaper option than installing a fish ladder. The state and federal government required the company to provide fish passage, but the group Save Our Sebasticook fought the issue for years.

"It looks like the bank is failing," said Rep. Kenneth C. Fletcher, R-Winslow, founder of Save Our Sebasticook, which fought the dam's breaching. "The important thing is, it was known from the beginning that the bank was unstable."

Reynolds, however, offered a three-point explanation to refute Fletcher's claims:

• Soil washed downstream by Sunday night's heavy rains went just three feet down prior to hitting clay. "That's a good sign," Reynolds said. "The clay is what's holding all of this slope here together."

• The water pressure in the clay is not increasing, showing that drainage is normal.

• The rate of ground movement was nearly the same prior to and after Friday night's "spike."

Residents upstream also have concerns about drawdown, which left huge portions of the riverbank exposed.

"This is the worst environmental disaster ever in this town," said Donna Laliberte, a Save Our Sebasticook member. "The deer can't get to the water because the mud is so soft and deep. The periwinkles and the fish and the mussels are just dying, and the stench is unbelievable."

Larry Grard -- 474-9534, Ext. 343

lgrard@centralmaine.com

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