By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

NEWRY – Preventing a section of Sunday River Road from being washed away by the Sunday River now depends on the federal government.

Newry officials expect to learn this month if their grant application for $90,000 will be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

If it is approved, the town would have to conduct a public hearing and special town meeting to provide $30,000 in matching funds, Sunday River restoration consultant Jeff Stern of Harrison said Thursday.

“Things are looking positive right now,” Stern said of what he called a “pretty exciting possibility.”

Before October’s rainstorms, the very unstable river had eroded its bank to within 15 feet of Sunday River Road at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound Road.

“Further erosion is a big concern, because Sunday River Road provides the sole access to camps, houses, recreation, timber harvesting operations and emergency services upriver,” Stern said.

Sometime this month, officials from FEMA and the Maine Emergency Management Agency in Paris are expected to join town officials and members of the Sunday River Watershed Stakeholders Group to more closely examine the site.

The remedy, Stern said, is to reshape and reslope the river’s vertical cliff banks, and add riprap and plantings to prevent the banks from again eroding.

“Right now, the banks are too steep to support vegetation,” he added.

Additional in-stream work would include the possible insertion of rock vanes to redirect high flows toward the river channel’s center and away from stream banks.

At a stakeholders meeting on Oct. 26 in Newry, 17 local and state government officials also discussed using an experimental erosion control method in the Sunday River’s upper watershed.

It is currently being used in the White Mountain National Forest’s Great Brook watershed, which is located south of the Caribou-Speckled Mountain Wilderness in Stoneham.

A vast network of abandoned logging roads high in the Sunday River watershed have been identified as the culprit behind much of the river’s instability.

At the stakeholders’ June meeting, White Mountain National Forest ranger Jay Milot explained the experimental “chop and drop” method he has been using.

Trees of a certain size are chopped down, then placed across a stream or eroded logging road in strategic places. The trees then catch and trap debris and sediment behind them.

In an Oct. 6 e-mail, Stern said he visited Milot’s work area in July and witnessed “pretty dramatic” results.

These included narrowing the stream channel from being overly widened, raising a severely down-cut channel to reconnect it with its floodplain, controlling the downstream movement of sediment, and creating pools for fish habitat.

“All of this happened within one or two years of dropping the trees,” Stern stated.

Likening the Sunday River watershed’s problems to those of Great Brook watershed, Stern believes that “chop and drop” would work in Newry.

“It would be a relatively inexpensive method of erosion control that would benefit the entire downstream watershed,” he stated.

“Of course, some planning is involved. You can’t just go nuts and cut every tree down along a stream. That would just create a worse problem,” Stern added.

After a lengthy discussion at the Oct. 26 meeting, Stern said officials decided to try a pilot “chop and drop” program in the upper Sunday River watershed. Then, if it works, follow it with a much larger version.