News that the Nature Conservancy will purchase four Kennebec River dams to restore free-flowing water and Atlantic salmon habitat is certainly historic, but whether it merits celebration depends on variables not yet known.

The $168 million deal with the dams’ owner, Brookfield Renewable, announced on Tuesday is complex and will not be consummated for years, due to myriad federal regulations on decommissioning and numerous concerns about how dam removal will actually proceed.

It’s a breathtaking prospect, to be sure: continuous fish passage from the ocean to the Kennebec’s confluence with the Sandy River at Norridgewock and its upstream salmon spawning grounds. While the removal of the Edwards Dam at Augusta in 1999 was significant, this is potentially bigger, perhaps on a scale with th

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