"The silvery water of the Royal River glistens as sunlight strikes its surface on an overcast afternoon. The modest waterway flows an easy 39 miles from southern Maine’s Sabbathday Lake to the Atlantic coast at Casco Bay, attracting kayakers, paddleboarders, and great blue heron.
But to Landis Hudson, a Yarmouth resident who describes herself as “a bit of a river therapist,” the Royal is no idyllic symbol of a bucolic New England. It’s a broken, flagging ecosystem, mainly due to two dams – the Bridge Street and East Elm Street dams – that block migratory fish from their natural habitat.
That may be about to change. Ms. Hudson, who runs the environmental nonprofit Maine Rivers, believes the Royal can be part of New England’s recent river revolution: the removal of thousands of small dams – once used to power mills during the Industrial Revolution – that have clogged local waterways for over 250 years."
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