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Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Trashing a river: 'Somebody else will clean up after me'
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||
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The Four-Part Series: Saco River: Source to Sea | |||
It starts with us taking a hike through the woods with a 60-pound canoe. It's a borrowed canoe and the portage yoke is broken. That means photographer Gregory Rec and I must haul the 18-foot canoe in our arms, like dead weight, for the entire 600-yard portage around the Great Falls dam in Hiram. That's the length of six football fields. Thus marks the beginning of our 36-mile trek through the Saco River's midsection, from Hiram to Dayton, and it is not so much fun. But, hey, portages are just part of the whole package when you are canoeing the 85 miles of Saco River that flows in Maine. Great Falls is the first of six hydropower stations we'll meet along the way and is one of the portages we cannot avoid. At the foot of the dam we find an amazing beach surrounded by lush pine, maple and oak forests. All of it seems dwarfed, though, by the 79-foot ledge that, even with a dam, first built in 1917, remains an impressive waterfall. This place is beautiful. Bluet damselflies and amberwing dragonflies dip their wings in the warm and shallow water of the Saco below the dam, as it continues its way toward the Atlantic Ocean. I can't help but notice, however, the trashy campsite at the edge of the woods. I also can't help but notice the beer cans on the beach, or the piles of broken glass. "Guess you have to keep your shoes on here," Greg says, shaking sand from his sandals. A woman walks by us on the beach and asks us if we are staying at the campsite. Her name is Crissa Shepard. She is from Standish. She has brought her dog Bo to romp in the water. And she wants to know if we are the ones who are trashing the forest and the beach. When I tell her that, no, in fact, it is not our campsite, Crissa and I engage in a conversation that I will end up having with many other people along this stretch of river. She tells me she is tired of the way people treat the river. She says people have turned the Saco River into a party zone and there are places she just won't go with her kids anymore because they don't seem safe. She is mostly tired, however, of the way people who play on the river leave their trash around and she says she just wishes people would clean up after themselves. "I mean, I smoke," she says. "But I take my cigarette butts home with me." She has a point. People are losing access to the Saco River, especially here in the middle section around the dams. FPL Energy has locked once-accessible roads because of vandalism and illegal dumping. Even here at the Hiram Dam, the road Crissa used to drive is closed to anything but foot traffic. The farther we get down the river, the less I can blame FPL Energy and other private landowners for yanking the welcome mat. There are times, like the jaunt from Hiram to Cornish, when we see very little trash and very few people. It is just forest and river for miles. But there are other times when the river is lousy with trash, like the 23 tires we saw in a mile-long stretch of river just before Steep Falls. When we finally reach our portage at Steep Falls, a 7-foot waterfall popular with campers, kayakers and swimmers, I can't help but wonder if everyone on this river is incapable of picking up after themselves. There is trash everywhere. Beer cans, plastic bags, fast-food containers, plastic soda bottles, empty propane canisters. It's on the beach and around every vacant campsite. It is tucked into the rocks below the falls and floating in the water. I am stunned to find six full black trash bags heaped in a pile. But I am even more stunned to learn their history. Russ Thomas of Portland and his friends started camping here two weeks ago. When they arrived, they went on a trash cleanup around the area. They filled the six bags with the garbage they dug out of fire pits and pulled off the beach. Russ, 27, is on par with Crissa. The trash, he says, is ruining the otherwise natural and wild river. "All of the burnable stuff we burn," he says. "And those trash bags, we're taking them with us." But Russ can't be everywhere on the river, and I wonder who will be taking home the garbage-stuffed grocery bags we see along the shores of Pleasant Point State Park, just above the Skelton Dam. Jocelyn Judge, who cleans up the Fryeburg section of the river with the Saco River Recreational Council, says it is the vacation mentality. "They're thinking: 'Somebody else will clean up after me,' " she says. She has another theory, too. Some people just don't care about the river. As Greg and I stare open-mouthed from the canoe while a boy in a motorboat chucks his soda can overboard, I'm not sure I disagree. |
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