LEWISTON — Heavy flows in the Androscoggin River triggered an alarm at NextERA Energy’s Monty Hydro station late Tuesday night and a malfunction kept the alarm blaring for at least two hours.

“It’s designed to warn people that water is coming over the rocks,” electrical engineer Paul Bessette said Wednesday. “And it did its job. It just didn’t stop.”

Bessette was part of a crew Wednesday at the Monty Hydro station upstream from the Great Falls working to find out why the alarm got stuck and to fix it.

Heavy rain upstream from Lewiston-Auburn has pumped up the river slightly at the Great Falls. According to the National Weather Service, the river depth at the Rumford monitoring station increased from 6.4 feet to 6.6 feet between 11 p.m. Tuesday and midnight. The alarm was first reported at about 11:30 p.m.

NextERA Energy Resources spokesman Steve Stengal said the alarm is designed to blare for about 30 seconds when river water overflows the dam’s electrical generator tunnels and begins coming over the falls.

“In this particular case, there was some malfunction of some kind and the alarm continued to go off,” Stengel said. “We don’t know why it happened. It’s never happened before and we are investigating.”

Bessette said there was no any danger from high water Tuesday night. The alarm simply signifies that water is starting over the falls.

“Of course, it’s just an inch or two at first,” Bessette said. “It’s designed to let people who might be on the rocks fishing or whatever know what’s coming, that the river is rising and it’s time to get off the rocks.”

The alarm was heard Tuesday night around downtown Lewiston and on top of Goff Hill in Auburn.

“It’s tested all the time, so people have heard it before,” Bessette said. “It tends to blend in with the traffic and other noises, so people may not recognize it. And it does not tend to keep going.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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