A river advocacy group’s focus on strategies to clean up the Androscoggin River is coming to Lewiston this weekend, three days in advance of state-sponsored meetings to discuss the continued pollution of Gulf Island Pond.

The group Maine Rivers will hold its annual conference Saturday at the Bates Mill with the Androscoggin in its cross hairs, according to Naomi Schalit, the group’s executive director.

Maine Rivers has been a leading advocate for the Androscoggin’s restoration. It has targeted continuing quality issues in the Gulf Island Pond impoundment in particular, claiming paper companies upriver could make a difference in the water quality of the pond and the river as a whole by curbing the amount of pollutants they discharge into the river.

Those paper companies include MeadWestvaco in Rumford and International Paper in Jay, two of the region’s largest employers.

For their part, paper industry officials point to improvements they have made in pollution control on the Androscoggin. But industry representatives also have questioned the reasonableness of requirements that seek to further improve water quality, particularly in Gulf Island Pond.

Meanwhile, people downriver are subjected to conditions that aren’t always healthy. Those conditions have led to advisories against swimming in portions of the river and eating fish caught in the Androscoggin’s waters.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has scheduled two meetings next week on Gulf Island Pond. The first, on Tuesday, Dec. 7, will be held at the Rumford Public Library. The second is on Wednesday, Dec. 8, at Lewiston City Council meeting chambers.

Both DEP meetings will open at 5 p.m. with what the department is calling “an information fair.” DEP staff will then solicit comment from people attending the meetings from 6 to 8 p.m.

Schalit railed about the state’s plans to open the session with the so-called fairs.

Describing them as meritless, she said, “We all get to put our propaganda out there” regardless of its validity.

“Their job is to collect information,” Schalit said of the DEP, “and then come up with good policy. The fairs are the wrong concept.”

Andrew Fisk, the DEP’s point man for the sessions, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The department said in announcing the meetings that they’re being held to provide information to people about Gulf Island Pond as well as to gather public comment.

In advance of the meetings, the DEP has posted information dealing with current river conditions, phosphorous discharges, and the status of algae blooms on its Web site.

Schalit said that a part of Saturday’s Maine Rivers conference will be an 11:30 a.m. press conference in which a new group, the Androscoggin River Alliance, chaired by Dr. Greg D’Augustine, will be introduced. The alliance, she said, draws membership from as far west as Rumford and as far east as Brunswick and Topsham.

D’Augustine will outline the group’s goals and introduce supporters, she said.

Other Saturday conference activities include workshops on river restoration projects, a tour of the Bates Mill’s historic waste disposal systems, a legislative panel discussion, and case studies on non-point-source pollution remediation.