Volume 6, No. 4

Promoting Cooperation to Maintain and Enhance
Environmental Quality in the Gulf of Maine

Clearing the way for herring:
first coastal dam removal complete in Massachusetts

For the first time in 20 years, herring will swim upstream to their spawning grounds thanks to the removal of a dam this fall on Plymouth, Massachusetts’ Town Brook. It was the first removal of a coastal area dam in the state. Town Brook flows from Billington Sea (a 250 acre freshwater pond) through Plymouth town center and into the harbor. The Billington Street dam was the last remaining obstruction to the passage of blueback herring and alewives through the stream. In years past, state fisheries officials and volunteers trucked 7,000 herring to Billington Sea in hopes that the fish would spawn and return on their own the following year. Removal of the dam opened up 1.5 miles of Town Brook and completed work done previously: removal of sediment, regrading the channel bottom and planting native vegetation to stabilize the brook’s banks. The restoration work is expected to increase the herring and alewife populations almost tenfold, to more than 100,000 annually and eliminate the need to manually transport and release adult fish upstream. The $350,000 project was paid for through a partnership between the federal NOAA Fisheries Community-Based Restoration Program, the American Sportfishing Association’s FishAmerica program and other federal, state and town money.

The old Billington Street dam...

...gone forever.