Androscoggin River – News

Muskie’s threatened Clean Water Act delivers ‘billions of dollars in economic benefits’ annually

Jay Burns — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 22:24:21 +0000

Forty-five years ago this fall, the Clean Water Act became law thanks to the work of U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie ’36 of Maine. That we know.

Less well-known is that President Nixon initially vetoed the act, calling the legislation “extreme and needless overspending.” (The veto is so little known that some websites credit Nixon with signing the bill.)

In the Senate, Muskie led the rapid and successful override effort, and the bill became a law on Oct. 18, 1972. Muskie ridiculed Nixon’s opposition, using speech-making tactics likely learned as a �ֲ��ý debater, including these pointed rhetorical questions, each starting with “Can we…?,” a technique known as anaphora:

“Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make possible life on this planet? Can we afford life itself”?

Today, environmental economists like Lynne Lewis, the Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics at �ֲ��ý, are adding oomph to Muskie’s blistering rebuttal by measuring the financial benefits of clean water, at a time of ongoing

�ֲ��ý environmental economist Lynne Lewis (left) speaks during a media event at Veterans Memorial Park along the Androscoggin River in Lewiston on Oct. 18. Also speaking were, from left, Dick Anderson, former Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologist; Natalie Lounsbury of River Rise Farm in Turner; Lisa Pohlmann, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine; and Beckie Conrad ’82, president and CEO of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. (Courtesy of Lynne Lewis)

Last month, on the 45th anniversary of Muskie’s landmark Clean Water Act, Lewis offered some of that evidence as she spoke at a press event sponsored by the Natural Resources Council of Maine and held along the Androscoggin River:

Good morning. I am an environmental economist. Many people I meet ask what that is. Environmental economics is, in part, focused on measuring the costs and benefits of environmental policies. The Clean Water Act, authored by Sen. Edmund Muskie, a graduate of �ֲ��ý College here in Lewiston, has been enormously successful in economics terms — meaning providing economic benefits well in excess of the costs of compliance.

The Clean Water Act provides billions of dollars in economic benefits annually, by protecting the water we drink and in which we fish, swim, boat in, and live near.

For a state like Maine that is literally filled with rivers, lakes, streams, and coastline, clean water provides enormous economic value to our state in the form of reduced health care costs, improved recreational opportunities and tax revenues to the state from increased tourism. From my research and that of others, it is clear that clean water significantly increases waterfront property values for both homeowners and businesses.

Thriving businesses and community events take place along rivers such as this. These revenue sources did not exist before the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act has resulted in a rebounding of river herring and other sea-run fish, contributing to the health of our Gulf of Maine fisheries.

The crowd-pleasing success of the Great Falls Balloon Festival underscores the value of a cleaned-up Androscoggin River. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

According to a study by the University of Maine, our lakes contribute an estimated $3.5 billion to Maine’s economy annually, supporting 52,000 jobs. Clean coastal waters support the thousands of lobstering and fishing jobs that deliver landings of more than $700 million annually.

As a result of the clean water quality in Maine, the Portland Water District is one of only 50 water districts in the U.S., out of 50,000, that can forgo having a filtration plant. It would cost $70 million to build a filtration plant and an additional $1 million a year to maintain and operate that plant.

The Clean Water Act has done more to clean up our lakes, streams and rivers than any other single piece of environmental regulation.

Scott Pruitt’s efforts to cut EPA funding for programs that keep Maine’s waters clean, and undo a major water protection rule are examples of his moves to quickly and stealthily dismantle environmental regulations at the expense of those of us who benefit from them.

The Clean Water Rule, enacted by the Obama administration, was designed to take the existing federal protections on large water bodies and expand them to include the wetlands and small tributaries that flow into these larger waters. This rule closed loopholes that had left more than 55 percent of Maine’s stream miles and thousands of acres of wetlands at risk for pollution, thus threatening the drinking water of Mainers across the state.

Back in 2015, the EPA and the U.S. Department of the Army issued a report examining the costs and benefits of expanding the protected waters of the U.S. The original estimate concluded that the water protections would indeed come at an economic cost — between $236 million and $465 million annually.

But it also concluded, in , that the economic benefits of preventing water pollution would be much greater: between $555 million and $572 million.

It’s no surprise that the benefits of protecting America’s rivers, lakes, and streams far outweigh the costs. Whether we’re fishing or swimming or just drinking the water that comes from our taps, protecting our streams and wetlands is a win for all Mainers.

The need for clean water is not controversial. Our own Sen. Muskie, the driving force behind the Clean Water Act, knew this. We can’t afford to go backward on clean water protections. The Clean Water Act benefits all of us.

Held at Veterans Memorial Park on the Androscoggin — Exhibit A when it comes to the beneficial effects of Muskie’s landmark legislation — the gathering’s speakers also included Rebecca Conrad ’82, CEO and president of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. No stranger to the area — she co-owned an Auburn business for 20 years and has worked at �ֲ��ý — Conrad said she knows “firsthand the river’s power and potential as an economic driver in the community.”

What’s In a Lewiston Name: Androscoggin

Jay Burns — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 20:30:30 +0000

“Androscoggin,” the name of Lewiston’s river and county, is the contemporary word describing a Native American tribe that lived in New Hampshire, Maine, and southern Quebec. The tribe was likely absorbed by neighboring tribes by the 18th century.

The Name Rocks

The word “Androscoggin” is one of many English versions of the Native American word describing the tribe and the place where the tribe lived. Others include Anconganunticook, Anasagunticook, Amasaquanteg, and Amascongan. (One historian counts 60 different versions.)

Because there are so many variations, a precise translation is impossible, says Associate Professor of History Joe Hall. “The translation I have seen most often is ‘place where you smoke fish or meat.'”

Hall also notes that one variation of the name is “Amitgonpontook.” As he’s seen “pontook” translated as meaning “falls,” he offers this as an appropriate meaning of Androscoggin: “A place to smoke fish or meat at the falls,” and that’s the translation he’s used in a map of Wabanaki place names in western Maine.

This definition, he says, would refer specifically to the Great Falls of Lewiston-Auburn, “where Wabanaki peoples, Androscoggins included, caught fish.”

By famed 20th-century illustrator Dean Cornwell, this interpretation of Native Americans fishing on the Androscoggin in the 1600s hangs in the lobby of the Five County Credit Union in Lewiston. The mural was installed in 1960 when the building housed Manufacturers National Bank.

Then Come the English

Among early settlers, the river name Androscoggin took hold in the 17th century. Some accounts say that then–New England governor Edmund Andros, in an act of self-flattery, made the change to Androscoggin. That’s uncertain, but the garrison-turned mill in Brunswick, Fort Andross, was indeed named for him.

Counting Coggins

The U.S. Geological Survey lists many historical variations of the river name including Ambrose Coggin, Amos Coggin, Andrews Coggin, Andros Coggin, and Andrus Coggin.

County Me In

Incorporated in 1854, Androscoggin County was late to the game: It was the 14th of Maine’s 16 counties.

And There’s More

Androscoggin also names a Maine lake and island, an Auburn-based land trust, a dorm at the University of Maine, and streets in New Hampshire (Gorham and Milan), in Massachusetts (Vineyard Haven), and in Maine (Windham, Jay, Mechanic Falls, Bethel, Lewiston, Orono, Greene, Lisbon Falls, and Brunswick). There’s even an Androscoggin Bluffs in Livermore Falls, Maine.

And there’s a ranger station in Berlin, N.H.; and many businesses and organizations, including a bank, humane society, and orthodontist.

And, the Androscoggin Scholarship Fund the name of the �ֲ��ý fund, supported by the college’s local friends and supporters, that awards need-based financial aid to students who from the communities within Androscoggin County.

Park Place

One of the newest places to carry the Androscoggin name is the Androscoggin Riverlands State Park, established in 2009 right across the river from the �ֲ��ý rowing team’s boathouse in Greene.

This wide, calm section of the Androscoggin River is known as Gulf Island Pond. About four miles north of campus, it’s near the new Androscoggin Riverlands State Park. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ��ý College)

What’s in a Lewiston name: Lown

Jay Burns — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 17:03:24 +0000

The area’s southernmost bridge across the Androscoggin (the one near the Auburn Rollodrome) was named for Lewiston son Dr. Bernard Lown in 2008.

Name that Bridge

Maine bridge number 3330, built in 1936 after a flood took out the original 1873 bridge, never had an official name. Locally, it was known as the South Bridge.

Lown, Lithuania, and Lewiston

The family of Bernard Lown were Jewish émigrés from Lithuania. Lown’s uncle Philip came to the U.S. in 1907 and owned shoe factories in Maine cities, including Auburn. Bernard’s family arrived around 1934, and he attended Lewiston High School and the University of Maine. He received a medical degree from Johns Hopkins.

Standing on the Lewiston side of the Androscoggin River, Bernard Lown watches the festivities during dedication ceremonies for the Bernard Lown Peace Bridge on
Oct. 17, 2008. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Peace Bridge

The bridge’s full name is now the “Bernard Lown Peace Bridge.” Besides being a cardiologist, Lown is a Nobel Peace Prize–winning activist, receiving the 1985 award as co-founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

The �ֲ��ý Peace

Local resident Al Harvie ’65 pushed to name the bridge for Lown. Larry Gilbert and John Jenkins ‘74, then the respective mayors of Lewiston and Auburn, supported the idea. The Maine Legislature approved the naming thanks to a bill submitted by then-Rep. Dick Wagner, professor emeritus of psychology.

‘Timely Reminders’

When he received a �ֲ��ý honorary degree in 1983, the citation noted that Lown’s peace activism offered “timely reminders to his own profession that its power ought to be in service to the healing of nations.”

Heart Healer

Lown invented the direct-current defibrillator in 1960, a vast improvement over AC defibrillation.

This story was originally published the Fall 2016 issue of �ֲ��ý Magazine.

Boathouse groundbreaking culminates �ֲ��ý rowing’s winning day

Jay Burns — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:22:45 +0000

After winning the April 17 President’s Cup, their signature home regatta, the �ֲ��ý rowers joined a groundbreaking ceremony for their new boathouse on the Androscoggin River. (Photograph by Connor Cahill ’17)

On and off the water, �ֲ��ý rowing had a winning day on April 17.

After sweeping all races vs. Bowdoin and Colby in the President’s Cup, their signature home regatta, the men and women of �ֲ��ý rowing joined families, alumni, friends, and college leaders at a groundbreaking ceremony for the program’s new boathouse on the Androscoggin River in Greene.

“What a great way to spend a gorgeous Sunday,” said President Clayton Spencer in her welcoming remarks, “by watching our extraordinary athletes and celebrating the start of construction on a new home base.”

Donor-funded construction “is no small thing,” Spencer told the gathering. “It matters hugely.”

Announced by the college in fall 2014, the boathouse project will be 100 percent funded by contributions from �ֲ��ý alumni and parents. Construction, which got going the day after Sunday’s regatta, is scheduled to be finished by the fall.

A donor-funded facilities project “is no small thing,” Spencer told the gathering.

Co-captains Naso, Conover, Taylor, and Wettstein join Steenstra for a turn at the shovels. (Photograph by Rene Roy)

The large crowd cheers the proceedings during the groundbreaking ceremony for the rowing program's new boathouse at its training facility on the Androscoggin River in Greene. (Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Co-captains Emma Conover '16 of Camden, Maine, Jamie Naso '16 of Greenbrae, Calif., Marit Wettstein '16 of Rochester, Minn., and Emma Taylor '16 of Scituate, Mass., pose for photos with President Spencer and head coach Peter Steenstra. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Teammates give coxswain Kate Traquina '17 of Wayland, Mass., her celebratory dip into the Androscoggin River after the regatta. (Photograph by Connor Cahill '17)

�ֲ��ý swept all 10 races vs. Bowdoin and Colby in the President's Cup, the program's signature home regatta. Photograph by Connor Cahill '17)

“It matters hugely to �ֲ��ý to have alumni, parents, and friends willing to support a need like this in full,” she added. “It matters hugely to �ֲ��ý that we can support our students in so robust and meaningful a way.”

Reflecting on the Sunday’s events, head coach Peter Steenstra says that “Sunday was a fantastic day. Rowing is off the beaten path, literally, and so it meant a lot to the rowers that so many people turned out for the regatta and the ceremony.”

He explains how he sees the new boathouse — which replaces a rustic, pole-framed barn — fitting into a program that has surged to national prominence in recent years.

The �ֲ��ý women won the 2015 NCAA championship and the men took their first NESCAC title. On Sunday, �ֲ��ý won all 10 President’s Cup races.

�ֲ��ý took on Colby and Bowdoin in the President’s Cup Regatta, and it was a feast on and off the river.

“A new facility doesn’t change who we are as a program,” he says, “but it will change how we get better: by removing obstacles” — like not having locker rooms or a team room.

In other words, he says, the new boathouse “will only change us for the better.”

The old boathouse, designed by �ֲ��ý Facilities, dates to 1988, and Steenstra has nothing but respect for a building that served the team, year after year.

“That was our pole-barn temple,” says Steenstra. “It’s like a home or a church: You make of it what you can. It doesn’t have to be ornate.”

The boathouse, he adds, “served its purpose as a place where we did our work. And we loved every part of it — including the chipmunks and raccoons.”

�ֲ��ý to build new rowing boathouse on the Androscoggin River

�ֲ��ý News — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 20:19:32 +0000

�ֲ��ý College will build a new boathouse at the varsity rowing team’s facility on the Androscoggin River, President Clayton Spencer has announced. At an estimated cost of $2.5 million, the boathouse project will be 100 percent funded by contributions from �ֲ��ý alumni and parents.

Subject to revision, this preliminary conceptual study shows the new �ֲ��ý College boathouse to be built at the team’s practice facility on the Androscoggin River in Greene. (Courtesy of Peterson Architects)

“The goal at �ֲ��ý is to deliver the best possible liberal arts experience for our students,” Spencer says, “and athletics is integral to this experience. Our student athletes train and compete at an elite level, so it is important that they have access to facilities that support a high standard of quality and competitiveness.”

“Appropriate for the level of athlete who wants to attend �ֲ��ý College and compete as a �ֲ��ý rower on the national stage.”

“It is hard to fully express what this does for our rowing teams,” says head coach Peter Steenstra.

“It is hard to fully express what this does for our rowing teams,” says head coach Peter Steenstra, seen here with �ֲ��ý rowers at the NCAA Rowing Championships on May 30, 2014. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ��ý College)

Head coach since 2009, Steenstra guides a rowing program that has achieved national prominence in recent years, including a victory by the �ֲ��ý women on Oct. 19 at the Head of the Charles, the world’s largest fall regatta. “This new facility will be appropriate for the level of athlete who wants to attend �ֲ��ý College and compete as a �ֲ��ý rower on the national stage,” he says. Construction at the �ֲ��ý rowing facility, about 7 miles north of campus in Greene, will begin in summer 2015, with the new boathouse scheduled to be ready for use by fall 2016. Oriented for optimal solar exposure, the 7,500-square-foot, one-story building will have boat storage space, locker and shower facilities, a team room with ergometers, and office space. �ֲ��ý has selected Peterson Architects, a Cambridge, Mass.-based firm specializing in boathouse design, as project architect. Henry Gillert of �ֲ��ý Facility Services will be project manager for the college. That the project is donor-funded sends an impressive message, Steenstra says. “When a group of people sees the value of this program and literally invests in it in order to ensure that it’s here for the future — that’s powerful.” The decision to move forward with a new boathouse also acknowledges that the college’s existing facility has reached a tipping point, he adds.

The women’s varsity eight basks in the glow of victory following its win in the Women’s Collegiate Eights at the Head of the Charles Regatta on Oct. 19, 2014. (Photograph by Andriel Doolittle)

The new boathouse will replace a pole-barn structure built in 1988 with dirt floors and no electricity. Despite the rustic facility, �ֲ��ý rowing has achieved national prominence in recent years, and while the spartan aesthetic has fostered camaraderie and a healthy work ethic among �ֲ��ý rowers, its deficiencies now outweigh its charms, Steenstra says. Today’s �ֲ��ý College rowers “operate above the level of what we have provided,” he says. Often ranked among the best college teams in the country, the �ֲ��ý women rowers have been a major force at the NCAA Championships, posting runner-up finishes five straight years, 2009 to 2013. The team’s victory in the Women’s Collegiate Eights race at the Head of the Charles was equivalent to a fall national championship, Steestra says. The men’s team has finished in the top three in NESCAC four years running, and earned a silver medal at the ECAC National Invitational Rowing Championships in 2012. (The NCAA does not offer a championship regatta for Division III men.)

Following the team’s top-three finish at the 2009 New England Rowing Championships, the �ֲ��ý men’s eight headed to England to compete at the Henley Royal Regatta. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Other markers of success include competing at the 2009 Henley Royal Regatta in England and having two alumni compete as Olympians: Andrew Byrnes ’05, who won gold as member of the Canadian men’s eight team in 2008 and silver in 2012, and Mike Ferry ’97, a U.S. Olympian in 2000.

“Another example of our increased momentum in fundraising.”

“The new boathouse is made possible through a number of generous pledges,” says Sarah R. Pearson ’75, vice president for college advancement. “We fully expect to complete the final phase of fundraising by Dec. 31, well before the start of construction.” Donor response to the boathouse project “is another example of our increased momentum in fundraising,” Pearson adds, following “last year’s total of $16 million in gifts to the college,” a 33 percent increase over 2013 and the college’s most successful fundraising result since 2006. Funding secured in 2013-14 included the Catalyst Fund, a multiyear gift from current and past members of the Board of Trustees. Catalyst Fund resources are now supporting institutional priorities within the Division of Natural Sciences and recent curricular innovations, including new Practitioner Taught Courses and Course (Re)Design projects, in which faculty and students collaborate to design new courses or rework existing ones. Catalyst Fund resources will also allow �ֲ��ý to pursue new initiatives in the Engaged Liberal Arts over the next three years. Additionally, the Catalyst Fund is supporting the design and early implementation of the Purposeful Work Initiative as well as financial aid and programming support for diversity and inclusion under the leadership of Associate Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Crystal Williams.

Harward Center marks Clean Water Act’s 40th with address by environmental historian

Doug Hubley — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:00:09 +0000

Environmental historian William Cronon.

With the 40th anniversary of the landmark federal Clean Water Act approaching in mid-October, �ֲ��ý College will observe the occasion with a talk by influential environmental historian William Cronon at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Cronon’s talk, titled The Riddle of Sustainability: A Surprisingly Short History of the Future, is the Charles and Virginia Tangney History Lecture at �ֲ��ý. Open to the public at no cost, the event is the second installment in this fall’s Civic Forum Series, produced for �ֲ��ý by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

The talk is jointly sponsored by the history department, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, and the environmental studies program, as well as the Harward Center. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

Cronon is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies American environmental history and the history of the American West.

He is a national leader in the study of past human interactions with nature, concentrating on how people depend on the ecosystems around them to sustain their material lives, how they modify the landscapes in which they live and how ideas of nature shape the world around us.

Cronon heads UW-Madison’s Center for Culture, History and Environment, which brings together scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, history and forestry to study environmental and cultural change throughout human history.

He has written and edited several prize-winning books, including Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991), which was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for best non-fiction work in 1991 and was one of three nominees for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Oct. 18 is the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act of 1972, one of two transformational pieces of environmental legislation championed by the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, Democrat of Maine. �ֲ��ý has a special interest in this legislation that launched a massive cleanup of the nation’s waters.

A member of the college’s class of 1936, Muskie was a native of Rumford and grew up near the Androscoggin River, which by the mid-20th century was one of the U.S. waterways most badly affected by industrial and municipal pollution. The Androscoggin has long been the focus of research by �ֲ��ý students and faculty, including one chemist, Walter Lawrance, who was the state-appointed Androscoggin rivermaster.

Muskie Archives opens historic Androscoggin River data to researchers

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:14:06 +0000

The papers of a �ֲ��ý College professor who spent decades studying pollution in the Androscoggin River — pollution that prompted the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 — are newly accessible to researchers.

Chemistry professor Walter A. Lawrance served for three decades as the Androscoggin’s state-appointed “rivermaster,” charged with regulating the pollution that paper mills could produce. His studies of river conditions, as well as documentation of research aimed at limiting the mills’ pollution output, are part of the Walter A. Lawrance Papers, a collection now open to researchers at the college’s Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

In a coincidence that points up the continuing relevance of the Lawrance collection, the archives announced the opening of the papers even as the state prepared to revisit a controversial 2005 pollution plan involving an Androscoggin paper company.

By the middle of the last century, paper-mill discharges, along with other industrial impacts and sewage, had reduced the Androscoggin to a lifeless, foam-covered river whose nauseating vapors were thought to tarnish silver and strip housepaint.

The Lawrance collection, says archives director Katherine Stefko, “traces the efforts of one person to clean up a problem that was enormous in scale and affecting thousands of people living along the river.”

The Lawrance papers are a valuable complement to the archives’ extensive holdings relating to Edmund Muskie, a 1936 �ֲ��ý graduate who served as a Maine governor, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state. Muskie grew up in Rumford, an Androscoggin mill town, and his first-hand knowledge of the river’s sorry state inspired him, as senator, to produce the landmark of 1972.

Lawrance taught at �ֲ��ý from 1921 until 1965. In 1943, he became a consultant for the state of Maine as the state began legal efforts to curtail pollution from three Androscoggin paper mills. The �ֲ��ý professor was given the responsibility of developing anti-pollution standards for the river, and thus initiated his annual study of the river’s odor and other qualities.

In 1947, the Maine Supreme Court appointed him “rivermaster” (later called “administrator”) of the Androscoggin, giving Lawrance the power to restrict not only the amount of waste the mills discharged, but also their overall production. In this role, Lawrance worked collaboratively with each company to determine ways of controlling the problem.

Lawrance’s students were essential to his Androscoggin studies. In a 1998 Lewiston Sun Journal article, 1961 graduate Gary Reed recalled a summer spent with Lawrance on an old PT boat, testing the water and pouring sodium nitrate into it to try to raise the oxygen content. “At the hot part of the summer we dumped every day and sampled every day,” Reed told the paper.

A turning point came in 1967 when International Paper adopted the Kraft method of producing paper, which reduced the discharge of liquid pollutants. The other companies converted by 1977, and from this point onward voluntary action and federally mandated cleanup efforts resulted in some relief for the river.

The Maine Supreme Court discontinued the position of rivermaster in 1978, and Lawrance officially retired from his duties. He died in 1987.

Under Lawrance’s leadership, Stefko says, cleanup efforts “made extraordinary progress from 1940 to 1970. When he started, people used to say the river was too thick to paddle and too thin to plow. And by the time he completed his work, he was anticipating — over-optimistically, as we now know — that people would be swimming and fishing in the river within two or three years.”

Today’s Androscoggin is much cleaner than it was in the 1950s and ’60s, but nevertheless is the only major river in Maine failing to meet the standards for a Class C waterway under the Clean Water Act that Muskie initiated. Dams, nonpoint-source pollution and pollution from the paper industry all remain significant sources of concern. Pollution has so depleted the natural oxygen levels in Gulf Island Pond, a sluggish 14-mile stretch above Lewiston, that in order to support aquatic life the gas is introduced by a giant bubbling system.

As Androscoggin Valley communities in recent years have come to appreciate the cleaner river, legal and legislative efforts to sustain the pace of improvement have continued. Following contentious public hearings this past spring, the state Board of Environmental Protection was scheduled to take up a controversial pollution plan involving the Verso Mill, formerly International Paper, in August.