By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

Ten years ago, a small group of canoe and kayak enthusiasts set out on the Androscoggin River to change the world.

They didn’t understand the 167-mile-long river and its challenges, but they understood its ecological, economic and recreational issues.

“We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, because we didn’t know the river well enough,” said Marcel Polak of Woodstock said Wednesday afternoon. They came to appreciate it during their 19-day paddling adventure in 1995.

Today, all the goals set by those enthusiasts haven’t been accomplished yet. But the resounding “splash” from that first journey has vastly changed the nation’s perspectives of a river that was once most foul.

Polak was a co-organizer of what has become the annual Androscoggin River Source to the Sea Canoe Trek.

Running from Tuesday through July 25 this year, the trek is a 20-day moving river festival. It is designed to help raise awareness and foster continued river stewardship for this scenic New England waterway.

The journey takes paddlers on a free series of day trips from the outlet of Lake Umbagog near Errol, N.H., to the Atlantic Ocean at Fort Popham in Maine.

Watershed moment

The genesis of the trek, Polak said, was two years before the 1995 trip during an Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments conference in Rumford.

“I was in a breakout group, and we were tasked with figuring out what to do to highlight the importance of the river. Someone said, Why don’t we do a source-to-the-sea canoe trek on the river?'” Polak said.

The idea fell by the wayside – no one had the time to do it.

Then, Polak and another member of the group, Katherine Groves of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, were simultaneously hired to do community conservation work from Errol, N.H., to Bethel.

“All of a sudden, I remembered the conference. And I called Katherine, and said, Let’s do this!'” he said.

That first trek attracted 10 to 12 people on some days, only a few on others.

Over the years since then, thousands have joined the adventure, participating in its daily educational outreach programs.

In 1999, the fourth annual trek even spawned the Androscoggin River Watershed Council, which now coordinates the event, and labors to protect the watershed.

“To our knowledge, it is the only source-to-the-sea river journey in the United States that is held annually,” said council trek coordinator Barbra Barret.

In the last century, however, until cleansing began, the Androscoggin River was hellish.

Before, sewage and sludge

To describe its vileness, Polak referred to an excerpt in John M. Kauffmann’s 1973 book, “Flow East: A Look at Our North Atlantic Rivers.”

Kauffmann, and Bart Hague of Waterford, did a two-day canoe trip on the river in New Hampshire and Maine prior to the start of cleanup associated with U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie’s Clean Water Act of 1973, Polak said. A Rumford native, Muskie grew up near the Androscoggin.

Kauffmann wrote that when he and Hague launched their canoe below Gorham, N.H., they found themselves “on a torrent of foul and sulfurous soup.”

Polak, quoting the excerpt, said:

“Instinctively, we tried to dodge the foam that formed a thick scum upon the water and the sludge that floated by like dinosaur stools.

“Instinctively, too, we raised our nostrils to try to catch what breeze of sweet air might blow down from the mountains to dispel the river’s fetid breath that rose from its mire in nauseating bubbles.”

Kauffmann blamed three paper companies for contributing more than 90 percent of the pollution in the Androscoggin, and for its near destruction.

But the mills weren’t solely to blame.

Municipalities, businesses and people piped raw sewage directly into the river.

The Clean Water Act, however, made it illegal to discharge pollution into the nation’s waterways without a permit.

It also forced paper companies, municipalities and industries to construct wastewater treatment plants to meet technology-based, water-pollution-control standards.

“The paper companies are doing their best right now, and municipalities, except for combined sewer overflows in Lewiston and Auburn, are also doing their best,” Polak said.

By the time the trek began, the river had vastly improved. It didn’t smell as much, he said, and wildlife was rebounding.

So much development

But people weren’t interested, because their perception of the river didn’t keep pace with the cleansing, Polak said.

Issues remain, though, like dissolved oxygen problems at Gulf Island Pond above Lewiston-Auburn, methyl mercury, dioxins and acid rain deposition, and nonpoint-source pollution.

But the biggest threat, Polak said, is the greater interest in waterfront property.

“Ten years ago, nobody wanted to be on the river. Now, there is construction and nice lawns and strange weather patterns washing things into the river,” he said.

“Ten years ago, it was not an area that people considered as having value. There was no market for Androscoggin River frontage, but slowly, as we started the trek, that shifted things,” Polak said.

Today, for Bethel the river is a new waterfront with high land prices. What was once valuable farmland along the river is also being sold at an alarming rate to developers, Polak said.

“I’m seeing more and more houses now along the river, despite shoreland zoning laws. Now, what I’m concerned about is the suburbanization of the river,” he said.

River recreation outfitters, under-realized trophy trout fishing, riverside trails and more access sites are other significant changes.

“For all intents and purposes, for someone going on the river to canoe or kayak recreationally, the water is fine, the air is fine. But that doesn’t mean we have to be complacent,” he said.

“We accomplished our primary goal, that of directing public awareness to the river. If people don’t use something, they don’t care about it. Every Androscoggin River community now sees the river as a resource,” Polak said.