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An Act To Provide for Passage of River Herring on the St. Croix River in Accordance with an Adaptive Management Plan
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:
Sec. 1. 12 MRSA §6134, sub-§2, as amended by PL 2011, c. 598, §12, is further amended to read:
 
2. Grand Falls Dam.   The commissioner and the Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife shall ensure that the fishway on the Grand Falls Dam is configured or operated in a manner that preventsallows the passage of river herring., in accordance with provisions established in an adaptive management plan developed by the commissioners that includes, but is not limited to:
 
A.  The exclusion of Spednic Lake, West Grand Lake and all points upstream of those lakes from the area reopened to river herring;
 
B.  The monitoring of bass population levels and establishment of the baseline bass population; and
 
C.  The limitation of river herring escapement to 6 fish per acre, unless the bass population is increasing beyond the baseline population, pursuant to paragraph B, of the adaptive management plan.
Sec. 2. Development of adaptive management plan. The Commissioner of Marine Resources and the Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife shall develop an adaptive management plan that implements the Adaptive Management Plan dated April 23, 2010 for managing alewives in the St. Croix Watershed, Maine and New Brunswick, developed at the request of the International Joint Commission and the International St. Croix River Watershed Board.
 
SUMMARY
This bill requires that the fishway on the Grand Falls Dam allow passage of river herring in accordance with the provisions of the Adaptive Management Plan dated April 23, 2010 developed at the request of an international joint commission involving the United States and Canada.