One hundred thirty years since: 1869-1999. During this time, water-powered mill-sites gave over, where feasible, to hydroelectric dams. Currently the efficacy of the latter is being weighed against other factors. Indeed, Maine now is being watched nationally for its public policy initiatives to eliminate some relatively inefficient dams, in favor of the long-denied rights of fish migrations. "Fish-ladders" alone, if attempted at all, have not served them well.
The Edwards Dam at Augusta on the Kennebec River was breached deliberately in 1999 - too late for the sturgeon runs that author Nathaniel Hawthorne lamented about there, but in the specific interest of future fish runs. And the Smelt Hill Dam at the first falls on the Presumpscot River in Falmouth is scheduled for removal in 2000, also - the same site as the dam for Colonel Westbrook's mill, which Presumpscot Chief Polin contested in 1739, for its stoppage of fish migrations.
One hundred thirty years before: 1739-1869. During that time, after chief Polin's unsuccessful 1739 demand for the fish-ways that Colonel Westbrook was supposed to install but did not, the Abenaki "disappeared" from the Presumpscot - except for occasional vengeance raids in the 1740s and 1750s. Polin himself was shot and killed at Inkhorn Brook in a 1756 raid. And by 1869, at the second falls (Ammoncongan) on the Presumpscot, S.D. Warren's Cumberland Mills already had started operation in today's city named Westbrook.
These were the forerunners of SAPPI's pulp-paper mill there, which closed in 1999, thus ending both the 300 jobs and the vile stench that they created. That SAPPI pulp mill used 1 million gallons of Sebago-Presumpscot water daily. A new natural gas power-plant in Westbrook is estimated to need 4 million gallons a day - theoretically not a problem, we are told by those who "know".
In summary, it seems that for over two and a half centuries we often have heeded those who "knew", only to have "learned better" later, and either abandoned or reversed our policies. Flexibility is an adaptive human trait, and fluidity is the name of the game when dealing with that most vital of fluids - water. Chief Polin now seems to have won a battle over Colonel Westbrook, if only posthumously and symbolically. Yes indeed, time and water flow, and we all live downstream of the consequences - fish included.
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