Let's Meet On Water Street

by Esther J. Perne

Let's meet on Water Street. Let's meet in downtown Skowhegan or Augusta or Waterville or any of the other cities, towns and villages in the area where water is within sight (that would be all of them) and was the essential source of transportation, power, commercial success and establishment of communities.

Let's meet on Water Street. Let's meet on that main thoroughfare in town where a taste of times past prevails and a quaintness remains and yet where progress and future plans welcome the visitor.

Let's meet on Water Street. Let's meet in downtown Skowhegan. Let's meet on a footbridge high over the Kennebec and admire the rocky waterfalls which Benedict Arnold's men had to portage with their bulky water-logged bateaux on their ill-fated trip to invade Quebec during the Revolutionary War.

In later times, logs floating downstream plummeted down the falls, while above the falls in more modern times electricity was generated and large mill buildings were used in the production of wood products. Today the falls also provide a recreational setting for canoeing and kayaking. For the future, a Run of River Whitewater Recreation Area is planned.

On the east side of the river a community trail awaits, complete with work-out stations and glimpses of the Kennebec and the backside of downtown. On the west is Water Street itself, a collection of shops, restaurants, a charter school, a farmers' market, a unique mill, parks along the river and impressive wooden sculptures by Maine sculptor Bernard Langlais. There also are a History House museum and the Margaret Chase Smith Library oriented toward the river.

Let's meet in downtown Augusta where the tide turns. The dam on that section of the Kennebec has been breached and the extensive mill buildings that once lined the river have been torn down but a unique part of Kennebec River history, the oldest wooden fort in the country, remains. Where once a solitary canoe laden with furs might have passed under the shadow of the fort, today there is more likely to be a Sea-Doo on the river. The fort is a good vantage point for looking across at downtown Augusta and at the parks that line both sides of the river.

Water Street in Augusta is rich in historic architecture, of doorways framed in local granite, a massive post office building and one of the few intact and preserved blocks of mill worker housing in New England. Some of Water Street's history and architecture is illustrated by Museum in the Street placards. In addition to parks and walkways on both sides of the Kennebec, a rail trails extends from downtown Augusta south to Hallowell and Gardiner.

Let's meet in Hallowell where Water Street has parks on the river at either end of this vibrant downtown of restaurants and shops. Many of the buildings were once warehouses for the merchandise delivered by ship from far ports before they headed back downstream with loads of tall pines, lumber, apples and ice. Today the accent is on art and antiques.

Let's meet in Waterville. Let's go to the Two-Cent Bridge and cross over the Kennebec as the mill workers did between Winslow and Waterville. Let's watch the Kennebec River flow underneath. Water Street goes by an enormous mill complex, an old building with many new uses. Downtown Waterville is full of restaurants, stores, change. Let's meet and see what they are.

Let's have one last look around. Let's look upstream. Miles north the high adventure of Maine's whitewater rafting takes place daily. Downstream where the Kennebec enters the sea, where a maritime museum captures the way river life was and modern Bath Iron Works represents the way it will be.

Let's look for reasons to return. Skowhegan has a River Fest next month. Augusta has one next week. Gardiner has a major festival this weekend. Hallowell has Old Hallowell Day in July.

The Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry Serves the Community

The Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry is located at the North Belgrade Community Center on Route 8, the Smithfield Road, in North Belgrade.

Summer is here, and the Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry is busy supplying food and household items to its many clients. Located at the North Belgrade Community Center, 508 Smithfield Road (Route 8), we are open every Tuesday from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. Any resident of Belgrade or Rome who feels the need is encouraged to visit.

For all the summer visitors — please remember us when you are leaving Maine at the end of your stay. When you are emptying your cupboards remember we have collection boxes at the Belgrade Lakes Post Office, the Belgrade Post Office, and the Belgrade and Rome Town Offices. Also, remember we have a bottle redemption box available for all residents at the Belgrade Transfer Station for you bottle deposits. Monetary contributions can be made directly to the pantry at Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry, P.O. Box 236, Belgrade ME 04917 or by sending a contribution to Good Shepherd Food Bank, Auburn ME and designating your donation be given to the Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry.

Food insecurity is a major concern in Maine — 16% of the households; 24% of our children and 23% of our seniors fall within these numbers The Belgrade/Rome Food Pantry has been operating for 25 years to serve these neighbors by distributing food and household items.

Last year the pantry serviced approximately 40 families/110 clients each month who were provided with food and household items to last them a week, along with our annual Holiday Baskets. The Food Pantry accepted donations of over 6,300 food items and other necessities, purchasing approximately 30,000 items and distributing over 33,000 items to almost 90 registered families. These figures do not include the many miscellaneous items acquired thru government donations, Good Shepherd deliveries and fresh produce.

Thank you to all of our volunteers, the towns of Belgrade and Rome and all the individuals, businesses, churches and organizations who help to make these services possible. We are always trying to reach out to those in need — please share this information with others. Enjoy the summer!

Vegetative Buffers and Mulch

by Dale Finseth

This week I'll try to remain focused on the two primary methods to slow down stormwater runoff. For those familiar with the LakeSmart program this will seem familiar.

Why slow down stormwater? Well, when we do get a rainstorm it often arrives with heavy rainfall in a short period of time. Over the past few years that seems to have been more the case. All that water running off our roof, driveway or other impervious surface, rushes downhill towards the lakes. In its travel it carries various chemicals and soil particles which, once they reach the lake, add silt, phosphorus, nitrogen or other toxins to our waters. This article will focus on two methods for slowing that stormwater: vegetative buffers and mulch.

Vegetative buffers are located in the path of stormwater runoff to intercept the water, slow it down and try and get the water to soak into the soils before reaching the lake. Ideally the plants in your buffer may be part of the existing landscape. But many properties have had vegetation between their buildings and the water removed.

A lawn is NOT an effective buffer. Water sheds off a lawn without being slowed much. Most properties need to include plants that will serve as a ground cover, plus some smaller shrubs and then larger trees.

If this type of planting needs to be added, make sure you use native plants appropriate for your property. Will they get enough sun? Will they grow in your soil conditions? Will you be prepared to manage their growth as they may demand?

Plant your plants in a manner to intercept the stormwater runoff. It also helps to let the natural duff collect beneath your plants. It helps to slow runoff and soften the impact of water droplets to protect the soils beneath. Determine how much managed landscape you need and let the rest return to a more natural and rustic landscape.

Mulch can best be used with your vegetative buffers. Erosion control mulch (ECM) is the better type of mulch. Mulching is one of the most effective and cost efficient Best Management Practices. For stabilizing construction sites, eroded banks, and top-dressing buffer plantings, mulch is great in your efforts to protect water quality.

Mulch applied to an exposed site in the right amounts will serve several functions. The primary function is to protect the underlying soil from erosion and keep soil out of a water body. A secondary function occurs when a mulched area is located on the down side of a slope towards the water. The mulch will filter out soil particles, fertilizers or toxins found in storm water runoff. In some cases, a mulch berm between a driveway, lawn or parking lot and the water can be added to provide this filtration even if there is no exposed soil.

Another major benefit to mulching is the moisture-holding capabilities of this product. Mulching landscaped areas with tree and shrub plantings ensures that water, either from rain or from a hose, will percolate to the roots and keep the soil cool and moist.

Mulch comes in many textures and colors. Sorting out the differences between "conservation mulch", "erosion control mulch," "bark mulch," and "wood chips" can become a daunting task. Erosion control mulch (ECM) was developed to protect soil from erosion in areas that receive high traffic, exposure to the elements or occur on steep slopes.

ECM, sometimes called slope stabilizer, is not your standard landscape bark mulch. The best way to describe ECM is "chunky." While regular bark mulch is fairly fine with strands of bark no longer than 6″, ECM has larger pieces of woody material, bark and small stones. These small rocks mixed in with the bark provide additional structure to the product and add weight for keeping slopes intact.

One key to the effectiveness of ECM is the size and shape of the bark material. When applied, the long and thin material essentially weaves itself together and creates a kind of blanket over the soil. Thickness of application can vary depending upon several factors but 4-6″ is average. Sites with extreme exposure to wind and water may need more while mulch berms may be 18-24″ thick.

Buffer plantings plus ECM work very well. When the District installs a watershed buffer planting, ECM is what we mulch with. One important thing to remember is that 4″ is too much mulch around the trunk of a tree or shrub. Remember to pull back the top 2″ of material leaving 1-2″ around plants. If the look of the ECM is too chunky for your taste, top-dressing with an inch of standard landscaping bark mulch is fine.

Remember, there is a lot to do in working to protect water quality.

Sidney Joins Dams InterLocal Agreement

by Dick Greenan

As of this writing both Great Pond, Long Pond and Salmon/McGrath, as well as most of our ponds, are full or above full pond — for a change! These June weekly rains, although not in the long range forecast, have been a welcomed relief for our ponds and our gardens.

Great Pond's Belgrade Village dam has one gate opened just 6″ while Long Pond's Wings Mill dam has both gates now completely closed. Salmon/McGrath continues to have its one gate just cracked three turns to allow the required 1 cfs flow.

The Inter-Local Belgrade Area Dams Agreement and Committee would like to welcome the Town of Sidney into the Inter-Local Agreement. We welcome their interest in the water levels of Snow Pond and unanimous support for this regional cause. We are also expecting that our neighbors in Mt. Vernon and Lower Long Pond will also shortly be joining this cause and their support is most welcomed as well.

We understand that our DEP Tier 3 Application for the final repairs at the Wings Mill dam may be approved very shortly. We were anticipating a fall start with the lower water levels but IF&W has a problem with the workers possibly interfering with the breeding of bass, etc. in the fall waters so we now have a July 15 start date. We will be maintaining as full a pond as the weather permits so that this repair should not have any impact on our Long Pond boaters. We will be replacing most of the wood crib structures and decking above the water level so hopefully we can count on another one hundred and three years of service to this great community.

Enjoy this beautiful summer, weather and your vacation!

Surviving the Third Reich

by Martha F. Barkley

Most of us have read the classic Diary of Anne Frank as preserved by her father. Such a young life of hope and sensitivity lost just a few days before her concentration camp was liberated. So, too, this almost happened to a very youthful Emil Landau who barely survived and then lived a long life and retired to Damariscotta in 1991.

Because Landau shared his Nazi wrist identification tattoo and the horror of the Holocaust in lectures repeatedly, his neighbor David Swanson in Walpole, Maine, decided to record the complicated events in this short, 93-page book, Emil Landau Surviving the Third Reich, which is full of meaningful photos selected by Carolyn Landau, his wife since 1961 until Emil's death in 2007.

With our recent commemoration of D-Day 75 years ago, I mulled over in my mind which Eisenhower biography to review: there are so many good ones! Instead, I found an Eisenhower observation in this very brief book full of a young man's ultimate survival, however tenuous it was when American troops arrived with food and fresh water.

"The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were…overpowering…I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda." (Page 67)

Emil shares that he was in the infirmary at the time "the American forces [came] across Buchenwald quite by accident, and they were totally unprepared to deal with what they encountered…Moreover, this was an Army on the move, pursuing an exhausted enemy…"

With his gangrene foot and part of his leg slowly healing and other serious ailments, Emil's only noted memory was that the Army left a truck of "potable water" outside the concentration camp gate. Prisoner mentality ruled everyone, so they did NOT venture out for this necessary lifeline of fresh water. The skeleton Army force left behind to help had to deliver the water to skeletal, starving prisoners within the confines of the now notorious Buchenwald.

Many readers of history are familiar with the horrors exposed at the Nuremberg Trials, but individual stories like the classic Anne Frank and Emil Landau clearly show the unfathomable loss of the young in families. Teens were there and forever have imprinted on their young souls the atrocities of man's inhumanity to man. Screaming in nightmares like our PTSD veterans today.

Emil barely survived and Anne almost made it. How tenuous and fragile are individual lives. Emil's recovery was long and slow just as his many experiences at various concentration camps were dreaded and too many. The 1930 map of Europe on page 6 is very helpful in following his recovery after Buchenwald: Konstanz, Basel, Davos, Bremen, and Bremenhaven before leaving for New York with family members joyfully reunited.

After reading his detailed journey, I went back to the map to retrace his youth in Witten, Herrlingen ,and Dortmund before his family's first forced train trip to Theresienstadt, "the Nazis referred [to it] as 'Paradise Camp' because it's prisoners we're selected from so-called 'prominent individuals' in the Jewish community…" Even though the family tried desperately to stay together and Emil also tried to remain with a cohort of friends, splintering of groups happened repeatedly from Auschwitz to Czechowitz to Glewitz and finally the dreadfully killing place of Buchenwald.

Emil's choices were many. He had the chance to leave his exceptional private school for Jewish boys and escape to its affiliated school in Scotland, full scholarship offered. Emil chose to stay with his family.

In each camp the same line up and separations were made, and Emil chose to act strong and volunteer for special work assignments. Friends agreed to this plan and occasionally they met up again for mutual support. After liberation and regaining his health, Emil qualified for a full college scholarship (once again like high school) in Europe, but he turned it down to flee with his family to America.

So many other choices are evident in his story. At one point he realizes the Russians would take over where he was, so he found a way to flee that place by not lingering and interviewing with investigations regarding Nazi treatment. "I didn't want to do anything that might delay my departure for Switzerland, especially when I learned that a large area in north-eastern Germany that included Weimer and Buchenwald was soon going to come under the control of Russia. I had heard much about the way in which the Russians dealt with German prisoners of war, and I wanted no part of it."

Most of all, Emil was ready and eager to get on with LIFE. Sounds like our WWII veterans, doesn't it? How good to know he enjoyed retirement in Maine and a friend, another retiree to our fair state, recorded his story. Emil Landau had a fine career out west in Seattle and San Francisco before moving in 1957 to New York.

Read the book from our Belgrade Public Library to find out about his eventual achievements, marriage and son Alex, shown in a great family photo sailing Penobscot Bay. Thank you to David Swanson for retelling this one of a kind story of Landau's family survival and hard earned success.

Fishing Is Heating Up

by Pete Kallin

The "Fish Bragging Board" at the North Pond boat launch.

This has been a busy week with a bit of rain and a bit of wind, unfortunately usually at the same time. Fishing in a light rain is often productive and fun if you are dressed properly. The light noise of the rain hitting the water masks boat noises, makes it a bit darker underwater, and knocks insects into the water, which can bring small fish up to the surface to feed, followed by the big fish looking for the small fish. Sailing on a sunny, windy day is exciting but can be cold and wet when it's also rainy.

As the water in the lakes has been warming, the trout are heading for deeper, colder water, while the bass and pike have finished spawning and are moving into the shallows to hunt sunfish and yellow perch that are now spawning. Bass fishing in particular is picking up at most of the lakes. The North Pond Association, which partners with the 7-Lakes Alliance to provide the courtesy boat inspectors (CBIs) at the North Pond boat launch have installed a "Fish Bragging Board" in their kiosk and are encouraging fishermen to log their catch and submit their photos for posting. It shows they are getting some nice fish at North Pond. Meanwhile, over at East Pond, a sharp-eyed CBI found variable milfoil on a boat being launched there. It was actually inside a canoe that had previously been in the Belgrade Stream and emphasizes the fact that any boat, even unmotorized ones, are capable of transporting invasive plants. There is no room for complacency.

I had one of my oldest friends visiting this week from Michigan and we spent a couple days fishing on Long Pond, catching up on each other's lives, and carrying on long conversations aimed at solving the world's problems. We saw a lot of loons sitting on nests, eagles and ospreys soaring overhead, and managed to catch quite a few fish, although no real "lunkers." I did manage to land a 2-ft pike on my 6-wt flyrod with a light tippet. The fish made several strong runs, and I was lucky that it didn't chew through the leader before I landed it. The next day, I added some tarragon to the butter left over from the previous night's lobster dinner, brushed the pike filets with it and broiled them. Served with a nice tossed green salad, some pasta with a couple of different sauces, and a fresh-baked baguette from Hello Good Pie, it made for an excellent meal. It was a nice finish to an enjoyable visit from an old friend.

This area offers some great outdoor recreation, whether you like to hike, bike, birdwatch, fish, sail, or paddle a canoe or kayak. Pick up a map of the local trails at Day's Store or from the 7 Lakes Alliance at the Maine Lakes Resource Center. And make sure you take a kid along on your next outdoor adventure. Also, please check the 7-LA Facebook page for details on some interesting events scheduled this summer.

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