The Sabattus River cascades over a dam Aug. 29, 2023, behind the Farwell Mill off Route 196 in Lisbon. The Upper Town Dam that was just beyond the Webster Road Bridge, middle right, was removed in 2022. Conservationists are aiming to remove part of the Farwell Dam and construct a fishway so fish can pass over the remaining part of it in 2025. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal file

LISBON — There are three Sabattus River restoration projects stemming from the former Farwell Mill slated for next year. Maine Department of Marine Resources will hold a site visit and public information session about the projects Thursday evening.

The three projects include capping the Bonafide Landfill and creating a fishway, cleaning up oil-contaminated soils at the former Farwell Mill site and creating a dam breach at the Farwell Mill Dam, according to a news release Monday.

The site visit will start Thursday at 5 p.m. at the parking lot on Saint Ann Street on the northeast corner of the Webster Street Bridge in Lisbon, according to the news release. Officials will walk people over to a viewing area. The public information session will start afterward at 6:30 p.m. at the Lisbon Town Hall. Virtual participation is an option.

In the next year or two the roughly 4.6-acre Bonafide landfill will close for good, according to the news release. BuiltRight Industries will cap the landfill, minimizing flooring waste, manufactured at the former Farwell Mill, runoff and contain it inside the landfill. The landfill is on the opposite side of the river to the Farwell Mill downstream.

Once capped, the ground above the landfill will be safe for people to walk on once the project is complete, according to Casey Clark, marine resource scientist for the Maine DMR. The concerning contaminant in the flooring waste is asbestos. The cap will prevent that mineral from running off into the nearby Sabattus River.

Some of that flooring waste has already entered the river and has mixed with riverbed sediments along roughly 2 1/2 acres of river next to the landfill, according to the news release. Most of the flooring waste will be covered by several feet of soil and rock, a fishway that will be modeled after fishways commonly found in nature, according to the news release. Maine Department of Marine Resources is responsible for constructing the fishway.

Contaminated sediments in other areas of the river not to be capped will be relocated to the site and buried beneath the fishway or it will be relocated to the landfill, according to the release. The fishway plan and sediment cap still needs to be finalized by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“Closure of the Landfill will consist of shaping the surface of the Landfill to drain and covering the Landfill surface with clayey soil overlain by vegetative soil,” the release states. “Covering the flooring waste in the riverbed and Landfill will result in isolating the flooring waste in such a way to as to minimize the potential for human and ecological direct exposure to the asbestos component of the flooring waste in the future.”

The project will include an asbestos management plan to address health and safety factors handling the flooring waste for those working the site, visitors to the site and for the general public.

Because state experts believe the river channel was moved by about 200 feet west during the construction of the dam and mill in 1872, removing the Farwell Mill Dam is not enough to restore passage for fish in the area.

“A nature-like fishway also provides additional benefits in downtown Lisbon, including wildlife watching, fishing and a more aesthetically pleasing background, compared to current conditions for town residents,” according to the release. “Once complete, the nature-like fishway will look similar to a river channel but not quite as random as a natural river.”

Maine Department of Marine Resources will remove a significant section of the Farwell Dam, down to the exposed ledge it sits on, according to the release. The removal will reduce the flood hazard, flood damage and risk to public safety. This project also entails removing the small impoundment upstream to the dam.

“Dam breach at this site will reduce the hazard created by the old dam structure by removing a significant portion of the dam to allow the river to pass the site therefore removing the possibility of erosion and scour that might lead to catastrophic failure of the dam,” according to the release.

The Farwell Dam has been the largest hurdle to restoring the Sabattus River in Lisbon because there are houses in the area now and a large piece of ledge that fish need to get over, according to Clark. The Department of Marine Resources’s planned fishway will help fish get over that large ledge.

A Maine DEP project aims to clean up No. 6 oil contaminated soils at the Farwell Mill site, according to the release. Oil is seeping into the river at the site because of the contaminated soil. The state will excavate the contaminated soil, disposing of it elsewhere, possibly layering the area with clay before filling it in with clean soil.

The Sabattus river powered the former Farwell Mill, incorporated in 1872, which processed cotton, according to a 1985 National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form prepared by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

Dams along the Sabattus river served several former mills in town, according to the state’s news release Monday. Those mills are now closed or gone, however the dams are still in place but have not been maintained for decades.

The Upper dam, which was upstream to the Farwell Dam, was removed in 2022 by the Department of Marine Resources and the Atlantic Salmon Federation, according to the release. That dam failed in 2012 after a large storm, which resulted in erosion at a town park downstream that needed to be repaired.

The Department of Marine Resources has been working on restoring the Sabattus River through various projects over the past several years. It removed a dam in 2019 downstream from the Farwell Mill and did some mercury cleanup in the area, according to Clark. The state finished cleaning up concrete and making pools in the ledge there this year, all to help fish get through that area.

The Sabattus Pond Dam repair in Sabattus is also part of the state’s initiative to restore fish passage through the Sabattus River, he said. The state is working with the Sabattus Pond Dam Commission to repair the dam and construct a fishway.

The dam is hard to open and does not meet Maine Emergency Management Agency dam safety standards, he said. That project is expected to start in July 2025 if the state can find a contractor through the competitive bidding process. The state is also removing the Mill Pond Dam in Sabattus in 2025, partnering with Maine Rivers on that project.