Smokestacks are coming down in Berlin, N.H., as the Androscoggin River city copes with post-paper existence. Destroying the dormant sentinels is symbolic for this city of 10,000, which now has high hopes for a federal prison and an all-terrain vehicle park for its economic survival.

“I think this place really wants to change,” Claudette Boutin, a repatriated Berliner, told the New York Times recently. When its mill shuttered, Berlin had a difficult transition from milltown to just plain “town.”

Berlin’s story is an object lesson for towns like Jay, where the Verso and Otis mills are watching the Maine Board of Environmental Protection closely, during deliberations on Verso’s wastewater discharge permit.

Though closing the mill is an unmentionable, it’s the strong undercurrent to this great debate about the Androscoggin.

Though better than its been in years, the Androscoggin’s water quality below the mills remains poor, despite its “poster child” status for the Clean Water Act and three decades of the act’s application.

Today, the BEP has the opportunity to right years of wrongs to the Androscoggin River, by delivering a clear, concise and sensible plan to bring the river into compliance with the Clean Water Act. Anything less would make this historic process meaningless, and further disappoint the Act’s late originator, Sen. Ed Muskie.

How the board does this, however, is open to serious debate.

During its last meeting Sept. 6, the board directed the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to draft a course of action, based largely on recommendations the agency made in May 2006. It’s at least something to go on.

Yet this still leaves some concerns. The board lacks key knowledge about the true causes of the river’s poor quality. The usual suspects lurk: Verso, Gulf Island Pond, and the omnipresent “nonpoint” polluters, such as farms.

Following its decision, the BEP would be smart to study nonpoint pollution into the Androscoggin, to either exonerate or substantiate – once and for all – its impact on water quality.

While keeping the Clean Water Act in its sights, the board must also balance the realistic ability of Verso to adopt its findings. By extension, this means Otis as well, as its dependence on Verso for wastewater treatment makes it vulnerable to restrictive limits.

Though it doesn’t technically apply to the discharge deliberations, the board cannot pretend the economic concerns of the mills and millworkers are nonexistent. Conversely, the environmentalist drumbeat of following the law – one the Androscoggin has evaded for decades – must also be acknowledged.

Delaying the permit for further evaluation of the science behind it – the dreaded Total Maximum Daily Load – would only bring these parties back before the board in a year, maybe two. While the mills could wait, the river and the Clean Water Act have waited long enough, and there’s no guarantee better science will emerge.

The board must make a decision now, for the river and for Muskie.

And, just as important, for the mills.