BETHEL — Getting groups together to learn from each other and generating problem-solving discussions was the basis for Tuesday’s annual Androscoggin River Watershed Conference.

About 50 people from Maine and New Hampshire participated in the hours-long event, learning about the various uses of the river, like its history, fishing and recreation.

They also delved into the river’s future and ongoing work to continue the restoration process to eradicate decades of abuse that polluted it.

“There’s a lot of different groups and a lot of different ideas on where the river is going,” Ferg Lea of the council said between sessions.

The Androscoggin River Watershed Council, which hosts the conference, gives a voice to those groups.

“So, overall, these conferences help groups get together and learn what each other is doing, and see where there can be collaborations and where there could possibly be conflicts, and by getting together and talking more, maybe we can solve them,” Lea said.

In one session, Beverly Johnson, a geology professor at Bates College in Lewiston, provided a different history of the Androscoggin.

Using a PowerPoint presentation assembled by Bates College students, she said the river was clean until about 250 to 400 years ago when the Western Europeans arrived and exploited the river through unregulated industrialization.

Johnson said there were no federal regulations until the 1940s and 1950s when Bates College chemistry professor Walter Lawrance began working with the mills to get them to reduce river pollution.

At the time, she said no one was regulating municipalities with any systematic approach until the Clean Water Act of 1977.

At one point, sulfites were used in the papermaking process which produced toxic chemicals that reduced dissolved oxygen concentrations in the water, killing fish.

The International Paper/Verso mill in Jay then switched to a new process that reduced this, and other mills on the river followed suit.

Johnson also spoke about Gulf Island Pond and Lawrance’s work to measure dissolved oxygen.

Plotted over years of cleanup efforts, it showed that the river was rebounding and creating better dissolved oxygen levels to eventually sustain fish.

Although the river is much cleaner today, conference speakers and Lea said it still has a long way to go. Johnson said the river today is mostly classified C.

Class C is the lowest water classification allowed by the federal Clean Water Act, but it supports indigenous fish species.

However, many people who want to use the river, want it rated Class B, which is much cleaner.

“The last session was talking about fishing, because the fishing is an indicator of water quality, so we wanted to let people know that there is good fishing pretty much up and down the river, which indicates the water quality is reasonably good despite the C rating,” Lea said.

“In general, a vast majority of the river meets B most of the time. Sometimes I think people put more stock in whether it’s C or B as opposed to what you can do in and on the river.”

Lea said the river now supports most of the things it would support at a B rating, like good fishing and swimming.

As for the Androscoggin’s future, Lea said, “We’re certainly going to see it maintain its level.”

“I think one of the things Dr. Johnson was getting at was they’re working on the alewife and shad fishery on the Penobscot, Kennebec and the Androscoggin as an economic engine, because that fishery is the food for the cod and haddock fishery,” Lea said.

“So, in addition to the industries that are currently using the Androscoggin and developing tourism, and just the river being a focus as a place for the younger spirited developer, it’s also potentially an economic engine for the coast of Maine.”

He said the fishing industry is suffering and one of the reasons may be that there isn’t enough feed stock flowing out of tributaries like the Androscoggin into the Gulf of Maine.

“So there’s a big, big picture of the economics of all of our rivers that goes way beyond the things that we see everyday,” Lea said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com