They scrambled across logs, rocks and cement with rod and tackle in hand. Others lined the shore with tailgates down, casting and chatting while we gathered up above. There was coffee, pastries and familiar faces but for all of this, I wished that I had a line in the water with Wayne by my side.
Have you ever heard a song about the river? Where do the songs come from? What I mean is, where do they really come from? Where is that place and how do we get there?
And so on this Saturday, June the 10th, we came not to play on its shores, we came instead, in search of why we had come.
There were important people there but important on the surface for different reasons. Our Planning Commission was there. A person who documents the river was there, the newspaper reporter was there, I was identified by another as being on the Conservation Commission. But none there were more so important than the families that had come in search of.
A speakers statement caught my attention with something about adversaries coming together. Maybe adversaries isn't quite right I contemplated. Maybe instead we are the people who view the river as an opportunity and we are people who see the river as a living thing.
This 1/2 mile across, 135 foot high cement wall, in and above the river has been generating electricity with its turbines and controlling the CT River since 1909. It has been an economic benefit for Vernon. It is a testament to what engineers were and are capable of. In the modern age, this recently renovated, 114 year old dam has risen to the status of renewable, sustainable, green energy. Even so, there is another view of it.
In May of 1981 the very first fish ladder on the Connecticut river was installed at the Vernon dam. It was specifically designed to restore passage for American Shad and Atlantic Salmon to their spawning grounds above the dam.
American Shad and Atlantic Salmon are anadromous fish. Anadromous fish are born in freshwater, spend their adult life in saltwater, and only return to freshwater in order to spawn. But they aren't the only fish in the CT river, some fish live their entire lives in the river and its tributaries while others like the American eel are catadromous fish migrating from freshwater to the ocean for spawning.
"In 1993, due to diminishing returns, the US Fish and Wildlife Services withdrew the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon management program
(CRASC)." Three of my four now adult children, participated along with many other Vernon Elementary School students, in hatching and releasing Atlantic Salmon into our local CT river tributaries.
May 21, 2023 in Millers Falls, MA (down river).
Shad make their way through the canals and the Turners Falls fishway on their way up river to the Vernon fish ladder.
Looking for wildlife at the Turners Falls fishway. A series of canals diverting the natural path of the river away from their riverbeds creates a significant challenge for migrating fish.
Great River Hydro, owners of the Vernon hydroelectric plant, operates 13 generating stations and three storage only reservoirs along the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.
"Five hydropower facilities along the Connecticut river are up for relicensing. These licenses will impact hundreds of miles of the Connecticut river for thirty to fifty years." It is the
Connecticut River Conservancy's mission to protect and restore the river and the wildlife communities that depend upon it. The public also has
the chance to weigh in.
It is the pressure of relicensing the Vernon Hydro Station and the mission to educate the public of the river's value and its challenges that has brought GRH and CRC to the Vernon dam.
The fish have come here by way of a primitive drive that ensures genetic diversity and the very survival of their kind.
The sign in the counting room at the Vernon dam seems to still hold out hope for a Salmon run. The CRC is negotiating a path to restore the river to a place that will allow the fish once again to be here in numbers as they once were.
My grandfather Maurice Normandeau, a Canadian immigrant, worked as a troubleshooter on the dams up north for GMP. Wayne worked at Vermont Yankee for 27 years and is now with NorthStar. I write a blog about finding nature in Vernon and am one of the founding members of the Vernon Conservation Commission.
But what I understand in my heart of hearts and as an educator, is that the true importance of all of this lies in the knowing of from where the songs of the river come. We aren't ever going to discover that until we acknowledge that we cannot fundamentally remain adversaries with each other or with the natural environment.
I first heard this song about the river when Joyana Damon, the music teacher at Vernon Elementary School taught it to her students. This is the song by Bill Stains that played in my head while writing this piece. I hope that you will listen to
River (Take Me Along). - Norma Manning
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