Cancelled: A Bad Project Get's Shelved...

Small dam at the outlet of Breeder Pond in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire.

Several years ago, New Hampshire NFC got involved in a proposal to modify a small dam in Franconia Notch to allow for fish passage.  The impetus was to open up what was said to be historical spawning habitat for brook trout upstream of the dam inn what was known as Breeder Pond.  Immediately downstream was  Profile Lake, a popular roadside fishing destination.  

A multi-agency/multi-org project supported by NH Fish and Game, 3 TU chapters, State Department of Transportation, and a local historical society, while it looked sound on the face there were many things about the project that did not make sense to us.

To confirm or deny our concerns, members of NFC drove to the proposal site to take a firsthand look at what was there and what was being proposed.  As we feared, the proposal did not accurately reflect the facts and it lacked a complete understanding of the issues at hand. 

While Breeder Pond was said to be an isolated water with no inlet, NFC found there to be roughly 1/3 of a mile of flowing stream upstream of the pond.  We also ascertained that the pond was manmade, not natural.  And we already knew that Profile Lake downstream was heavily stocked and inhabited by highly invasive nonnative perch.

At a subsequent site visit attended by all the parties involved, NFC presented the facts and our concerns.  We asked NHFG if they had any intention to suspend stocking in Profile Lake if they found successful natural reproduction post fish-passage work.  They said no.  We asked if there were yellow perch in Breeder Pond.  They also said that they wanted to preserve Breeder Pond for aesthetic reasons.

NFC formally opposed the project and went public with the facts. We felt that creating fish passage that would allow stocked and nonnative fish access to water they did not have access to today with no plan to suspend stocking just didn’t make sense. We also felt that the money could be spent better elsewhere.

Angling and e-fishing found no fish in Breeder Pond or upstream of it. While temperature logging was done in Breeder Pond, the data was never made public to see if it was a thermal stress. Then everything went quiet for a couple of years…

We recently heard from a member of the sponsoring TU chapter that the project had been shelved. This proves once again that while things don’t always happen as quickly as you would like, and defeat is more common than victory, you can have an influence when you assert yourself and present you case in a factual, complete, and impersonal manner.