A fish “trap and transport” program that began this spring is disrupting and degrading public use of Counting House Park, residents of Liberty Street told the Planning Board last week.
The complaints were voiced while Green Mountain Power of Vermont, owner of the South Berwick Hydroelectric Project, was asking the Planning Board for an amendment to its site plan at the July 15 meeting.
The Liberty Street hydro facility includes the dam and power plant on the Salmon Falls River and is situated between the park and the Counting House Museum.
The requested amendment pertains to an access next to the museum, but two residents of the area criticized aspects of Green Mountain’s fish migration program they said affect the public’s enjoyment of the park.
One resident claimed the project was not built in keeping with its presentation to the Planning Board in February 2025, and that vehicles and equipment park for long periods in the parking lot.
“This is a road right through a little park,” according to Phil Mundy, of Liberty Street.
Gail Santos, also of Liberty Street, said the board’s discussion had covered her concerns about the effect of the gravel drive on the aesthetics of the park and problems in the parking lot during fish migration season, and added a specific complaint.
“What really surprised me was on Hike through History Day with hundreds of kids running around [in the park], a huge State of New Hampshire truck was going right through the middle of them, and these guys had no idea there would be kids in the park,” Santos said.
The amendment before the board would alter a 400-square-foot portion of the company’s access road next to the museum from a porous surface to concrete in order to preserve the pipes that deliver water to the turbines, and would replace an equal amount of abutting asphalt with a porous surface, according to Green Mountain representative Eric Lahr.
The company is responsible for aiding fish migration past the South Berwick and Rollinsford dams as part of its federal licensing agreement. It received Planning Board approval last year for a new facility to truck fish upstream and release them above the dams.
The plan at that time included constructing a new access road on a 25-foot-wide easement across what is now the Counting House Park parking lot, a right-of-way easement retained by a previous owner when the property was sold to the Town in 1965, according to records at the York County Registrar of Deeds.
The documents approved by the Planning Board specified grass pavers – permeable grids that support heavy loads while allowing grass to grow through open cells – and included installing an additional 400 square feet of porous surface at the existing access next to the museum to comply with state shoreland zoning laws.
Lahr said there was a final inspection by former Town code enforcement officer Jeni McCabe when the construction was complete, and the town signed off on it.
Planning Board Chair Hershey Hirschkop suggested the board table a decision on the amendment and asked new Town Planner Jeff Brubaker to advise them on what options shoreland zoning would allow and what was originally approved for traffic volumes and the finished surface of the road to the new fish facility.
In other business, Hirschkop was unanimously elected to continue as chair of the Planning Board.
