Penobscot River Restoration Project
Penobscot River REstoration Trust
penobscot county, ME
The Penobscot River Restoration Project includes decommissioning and removal of the two lowermost dams on the Penobscot River. It also involves decommissioning a third dam at the mouth of the Piscataquis River, where The Penobscot River Restoration Trust (Trust) intends to develop a state of the art fish bypass channel around the dam . The Project's reconfiguration of dams will have a wide range of benefits to fish and wildlife populations, water quality and communities along the river. The Trust, a non-profit organization comprised of 6 conservation groups and the Penobscot Indian Nation, selected Kleinschmidt to provide strategic planning, licensing and permitting services for the decommissioning.
Strategic planning began with Kleinschmidt providing the Trust recommendations related to process management, FERC precedents, agency consultation, scoping of potential issues and identification of potential environmental and engineering studies. Issues associated with the Project include potential effects to federally listed fish species, state listed mussel species, shoreline erosion and stability, wetlands, fish habitat and movement, ice jamming, river flow regimes, terrestrial wildlife resources, and socioeconomics.
Kleinschmidt’s services included development of study plans, management of study consultants, preparation of public scoping documents, organization and facilitation of scoping meetings, preliminary hydraulic modeling of post dam removal water surface elevations, preliminary ice jamming analysis, agency consultation, preparation of a multi-project environmental analysis and draft and final FERC surrender applications.
For more information, please contact Allison Murray.