LIVERMORE FALLS – Kent Mitchell and Mark Holt were optimistic about the progress they saw on river quality last week as they paddled 12 miles of the Androscoggin River.

They were two of many people canoeing sections of the 164-mile river during the Source to Sea trek to celebrate the “renaissance of the river” that in the 1960s was deemed one of the 10 worst in the nation.

The river used to be tea color, Mitchell said.

“On our trip what we saw was a river with no foam, very little odor, tremendously increased clarity; we could almost see the bottom,” Mitchell said.

“You can see that the river has a sandy gravel bottom, Holt said. When he was growing up he worked on a farm bordering the river and there were mats of fiber left on the fields during flooding that were discharged from paper mills. And back then sewage drained directly into the river.

But as they paddled from Livermore to the Twin Bridges at Turner and Leeds this trip, they saw eagles, fish rising, osprey and lots of blue heron along with lots of bugs on the surface, a good sign, Mitchell said. There was plenty of green vegetation along the shore and aquatic plants in the water.

Mitchell of Jay and Holt of Livermore have vested interests in the progress of river quality. They’re wastewater superintendents for Livermore Falls and Jay, respectively, and have been involved in the cleanup. They work for two of many towns that face major costs if the state requires treatment plants to install newer technology to bring a deep portion of an impoundment at the Lewiston-Auburn-Turner lines into compliance with Class C standards. Livermore Falls recently built a $6 million treatment plant to meet state compliance and hoped it would serve parts of Livermore Falls and Jay for years to come.

The river originates in Umbagog Lake in Errol, N.H., and empties into Merrymeeting Bay in Brunswick. According to a Maine Department of Environmental Protection 2002 report, the river’s water quality has improved “dramatically” since the 1960s due to many actions including the mandatory requirement of secondary treatment; voluntary pollution prevention efforts and additional regulatory requirements at three paper mills; and the installation of an in-stream oxygen diffuser at Gulf Island Pond, which lies in Lewiston, Auburn and Turner, in 1992. Considerable cleanup progress has been accomplished over the years up to a point where dissolved oxygen criteria are met everywhere except in the deeper portions of Gulf Island Pond during some weeks in the summer, the report stated.

This creates a sticking point for Mitchell and Holt as well as environmentalists and those responsible for overseeing the state’s waters. Now the river is a Class C, the lowest legal ranking the state can set and meet the Clean Water Act of 1970s.

“The problem is the Clean Water Act never addressed a riverine impoundment,” Mitchell said. People are trying to apply Class C standards of a working river to a man-made pond in the river, he said. There is a level in the pond where the water drops from warm to cold. Below that near the bottom is where non-attainment occurs in the deepest section of the impoundment for limited time most years.

Mitchell and Holt get upset when they hear others saying that the towns and paper companies want to put more pollution in when arguing about the cost to bring that portion into compliance. There is a lot of information that points to the fact, Mitchell said, that if there were zero discharges into the river, there still would be portions of Gulf Island Pond that would still not be in noncompliance with Class C standards.

“We’re the people cleaning the water up before discharge,” Holt said. “We’re the people removing the pollutants.”

Mitchell said nobody is asking to put more pollution into the river. An analysis is being conducted now to see if it would be cost effective for towns and businesses to bring that impoundment into compliance.

[email protected]