Natural fishway instead of the dam worth a try

To the Editor;

Oh, what the heck, Dover-Foxcroft might as well throw in the towel. We’ve got a bunch of empty storefronts along Main Street, we might as well have an empty river too. Why not have even less to attract visitors and new businesses to our once beautiful town.

But wait, there may be a better way to go. It’s called compromise! Why not create a “nature-like fishway”, a visually appealing set of rapids or falls in place of the dam. This would solve all the problems that the dam supposedly creates. Fish would be able to make their way upstream through a more natural river.By making the top of the falls a few feet lower than the present dam, the occasional flooding problem on South Street would be alleviated.  And, instead of an empty river basin and mud flats, we would have an attractive downtown, as well as maintaining most of our impoundment for kayaking, canoeing, fishing, swimming, sea planes and other recreational uses. Plus, while they might not pay for it all, just maybe there might be outside funding for this approach — so everyone gets most of what they want.

By keeping the beauty of our downtown, who knows, we might attract more visitors, which might result in new residents and new businesses in our empty storefronts.

I think it’s worth a try.

David H. Perkins

Dover-Foxcroft