SACO (AP) – The owner of nine dams along the Saco River will install fish lifts and ladders in hopes of restoring runs of Atlantic salmon and other fish.

FPL Energy Maine Hydro plans to spend more than $30 million over 20 years to help sea-run fish reach spawning grounds that have been blocked off for generations by dams that produce electricity.

Federal and state regulators and local conservationists negotiated with FPL for three years before finalizing the plan.

Saco Mayor Mark Johnson said Wednesday the agreement aims to ensure that the 134-mile-long river is open to all, “including fish.”

Negotiations began as the company faced relicensing of the Bar Mills Dam in Buxton, where a fish passage is now scheduled to be installed by 2016.

The balance struck Wednesday is good for the company as well as the fisheries, said Frank Dunlap, FPL’s senior environmental specialist. “It provides a schedule and some predictability for us,” he said.

The agreement is part of a national effort to restore sea-run fisheries that were decimated over the past two centuries by industrial dams. Maine’s Penobscot, Kennebec and Presumpscot rivers are the focus of similar efforts.

FPL has already spent $16 million to create fish passages at dams on the lower river, including four dams near Route 1 that are part of a single hydropower facility called Cataract Station.

Under the new agreement, FPL will install fish passages at its four remaining dams, starting with the Bar Mills Dam in 2016 and ending with the Hiram Dam in 2025. Passages for American eels will be built at all nine dams.

Salmon, which are now trapped and trucked upriver, will be able to swim more than 40 miles upstream to historic spawning grounds.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, http://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-11-15-07 1325EST

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