FARMINGTON — The response to an Atlantic salmon restoration program in the Sandy River is showing promising results and prompting interest, a state official told a crowd Thursday night.

“They are coming back. We’ve got to be prepared,” Ron Joseph, a wildlife biologist who recently retired from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said. 

Joseph gave a presentation on helping salmon populations recover in the Sandy River watershed Thursday as part of a program sponsored by the Upper Kennebec Valley Chapter of SWOAM (Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine) and the Farmington Conservation Commission.

His interests in helping the salmon restoration mirrored the 70 local residents at the presentation at the Municipal Building. They didn’t hear his answers but instead were asked to consider questions Joseph raised. His hope for the program was to stimulate a discussion on how to plan for the future fish in the river and perhaps form a committee to explore the issue, he said.

Tom Eastler, president of the Sandy River Watershed, proposed that the group which includes representatives from towns along the river meet soon and start planning. The group formed in 1978 to deal with flooding issues and has continued on to react to watershed issues, he said.

Based on the return rates from the Kennebec salmon restoration figures, the local restoration project is exceeding what was expected, said Paul Christman, fisheries biologist with the Department of Marine Resources.

The Sandy River and its tributaries provide a cold, favorable environment for the Atlantic salmon with the adult numbers returning from the coast expected to be big, he said. Barring marine changes, by 2014 the Sandy River area could be “salmon central for the gulf of Maine,”  he said.

Although the 600,000 salmon eggs planted within river sites mostly north of Farmington last January sounds large, the 140,000 young salmon in the river in 2010 face high mortality rates. The salmon will return to the sea and head for the waters of Greenland and then come back. From what he called the class of 2010, about 300 adult salmon are expected to return to spawn in 2014.

More eggs will be planted next week and again in 2012 for subsequent returns in 2015 and 2016, Joseph explained. From the sea they come up the Kennebec River but are stopped at the Lockwood Dam in Waterville, a site near the former Hathaway shirt company.  At that point they need to be trapped and trucked back to the Sandy River.  The fish need to make it past four dams along the way back to the Sandy.

Questions Joseph posed included what to do about the Walton Mill Dam in West Farmington and whether to consider removing it but at what cost and who would pay. Instead of removing it, would a fishway be built for the fish to get over it but again at what cost, he asked. He also asked whether to consider keeping the dam in order to develop hydropower.

Another key question is whether the local area could benefit financially from restoring the runs of the “King of fish” and whether that would draw people to the area, he said.

“Farmington is in a unique position to make a contribution to this fish,” Joseph said.

Until 2006, the local salmon restoration was basically a research project that turned the corner and has begun to pay off, Christman said. Based on the percentage of fish surviving and the response they are seeing, he predicts the “eyes of the salmon world will be set on here.”

[email protected]