CHERRYFIELD, Maine — Maine is home to 31,752 miles of rivers, and more than 1,000 dams have been built upon them throughout the state's history.
This includes the ice dam on the Narragaugus River in Cherryfield.
It was built in 1961 to prevent chunks of ice from floating downriver and flooding the town, but since its construction, has prevented endangered Atlantic salmon and other sea-run fish from migrating to spawn.
"We have evidence of salmon essentially waiting around below the dam trying to figure out a time to get up it and that's actually very detrimental to their migration," Associate Director of the Downeast Salmon Federation Charlie Foster said.
That's why Cherryfield residents and conservation groups across the state are coming together to remove it.
"We wanted better fish passage and also wanted our ice control. We had a town meeting to vote on this and everybody voted yes," Cherryfield resident Art Tantangelo said.
Maine Coast Heritage Trust project manager Jacob Van De Sande has been working with Tantangelo and other town select board members on the issues the dam has brought for years.
"We knew this dam blocked 90 percent of the habitat on this really important river so it was a great opportunity to help convene a community around this issue and see if we can find a solution," Van De Sande said.
Van de Sande says that solution is replacing the dam with a more natural fishway.
"It'll be just a bunch of rocks in the river and a gentle slope, and it'll look like a set of rapids, so it's much more natural and what fish are used to," Van de Sande said.
The Downeast Salmon Federation and Maine Coast Heritage Trust are designing the fishway to help not only salmon migrate, but all 12 species of sea-run fish in the state.
"We'll have various channels for, let's say, when the river is at a lower flow to still allow the passage of fish species through there," Foster said.
The Downeast Salmon Federation hopes to finish designs on the new fishway within a year and begin removal of the dam in 2026.
Something Tantangelo and other Cherryfield residents are looking forward to.
"It's just awesome. Cherryfield's and awesome town to have gone through all this," Tantangelo said.