United States Office of Water Regulations Monitoring Branch
Environmental Protection and Standards (WH-551) Monitoring and Data
Agency Washington, DC 20460 Support Division (WH-553)
A Water Quality
Success Story
December, 1980
Penobscot River, Maine
(While this story describes progress in cleaning up conventional
pollutants such as oxygen-demanding materials, suspended solids
and bacteria, toxic substances may be present which may require
further abatement actions. However, aquatic life is progressively
returning to this area.)
"One of the goals set by the water pollution
abatraent laws was ensuring that our industrialized
rivers were fishable and swimmable. We've spent
billions to meet these goals, but people still drive
far from the cities for recreation in search of
'wilderness1.
"The vanishing wilderness appears to be returning
under the bridges and behind the buildings of some
of our cities and towns. And the reappearance of
Atlantic salmon in the middle of a small Maine city
may help people to start looking again at the land
and water near their homes and offices."
Lawrence A. DeCoster,
New England Regional Manager
American Forest
Institute
June, 1978, was a bright month in a bright year for residents
and visitors in the Bangor area of the 270 mile-long Penobscot
River Valley in Eastern Maine.
In the warm summer days of that year, oldtimers saw the
Penobscot River as it was in the days of their youth, and younger
people saw a river that at least approached the description of the
once far cleaner stream described by their ancestors.
It wasn't just that the sparkle had returned to the
Penobscot's surface waters as it flowed to the Atlantic Ocean, and
it wasn't the fact that ev'ors associated with the river for
. ades had di
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It was the fishermen lining its banks, bobbing up and down in
boats and canoes in the rips and currents of the river. More than
anything else it was the flashes of silver, the targets of their
whipping lures. For after an absence of four decades, Atlantic
salmon had finally returned to the once highly polluted Penobscot.
There were moderate indications in 1976 and 1977 that the
massive effort to restore the Penobscot's water quality was
working, but in the Bangor area in 1978 there was no doubt about
it. Nearly 100 Atlantic salmon were caught in June around the
Bangor Salmon Pool facing the Bangor Salmon Club. On a single day
late in that month, 28 salmon were landed by jubilant anglers and
the total rod and reel catch for the 1978 season in the Bangor
area was estimated at 400.
The salmon pool and its adjacent waters held no monopoly on
the action, for the salmon moved up along Kenduskeag Stream, a
small tributary that threads its way through the heart of Bangor's
business district. And among the enthusiastic spectators lining
bridges and retaining walls to watch Atlantic salmon being taken
from the Kenduskeag were many older people who saw this return as
an event that had occurred against all reasonable odds.
CONDITIONS ALONG THE
PENOBSCOT RIVER IN THE PAST
The Lumber Industry
Writing about his travels in Maine during the mid-nineteenth
century, Henry David Thoreau noted "there are over 250 sawmills on
the Penobscot River and its tributaries above Bangor."
Since its earliest days the economy of the Penobscot River
Valley, an area rich in timber resources, has been based on forest
products, initially lumber, and since the late nineteenth century,
pulp and paper making.
By 1860, Bangor was the largest lumber exporting port in the
world, and the Penobscot River Valley was the world's leading
supplier of white pine, producing two hundred million board feet
of lumber annually. Other lumber-producing areas in the United
States at that time produced only half as much.
Most of this lumber was exported but some went into building
cargo-carrying vessels for America's merchant marine, considered
to be the best and largest in the world during that period. At
least half of the nation's merchant fleet was constructed in Maine
shipyards. According to Maine shipbuilding authority Lincoln
Colcord, anywhere from one to two thousand vessels of all sizes
were built along the Penobscot River between 1773 and 1861.
These activities, however, eventually caused serious
environmental damage along the Penobscot.
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/•-. f r- pi x "7
u z o u o /
QUEBEC
(CANADA)
Penobscot River
Old Town*
Bradley «
Orono
Veazie
Bangor
J
Bucksport
Kenciuskeag
Stream
NOTE: Map does not show the entire State
of Maine, but rather, only that portion
which includes the Penobscot River Basin.
Psnobscot River
Main Stem
Penobscot Basin
Boundary ->•
ATLANTIC OCEAN
Having discovered that rocks and shallows, and the river's
unpredictable rates of flow held up the spring and summer log
drives to the sawmills—often by as much as one year—the lumber
interests constructed dams along the river to control the amount
of water in the Penobscot and to ensure an adequate rate of flow
for its log drives. The logs reached the sawmills on time but the
dams impeded the migration patterns of the river's thriving
population of Atlantic salmon, blocking their spawning runs
upstream.
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Sawmill wastes, sawdust and bark, went directly into the
river where they settled on the bottom. Sawdust deposits,
sometimes several feet deep, smothered bottom dwelling
invertebrates, the primary food for most of the fish in the
Penobscot, and also smothered fish breeding areas, preventing
these species from reproducing.
Along with sawdust, bark from the bank-to-bank traffic of
long logs to the sawmills also sank to the bottom where it rotted,
reducing the dissolved oxygen in the water which fish and aquatic
life need to breathe and live.
The Pulp and Paper Industry
By the late nineteenth century; the sulfite chemical process
had made it possible to use resinous, soft woods to manufacture
pulp necessary to make paper. This discovery gave the Penobscot
River Valley a tremendous economic advantage because the spruce
and fir trees in its forests are ideal for making pulp.
Maine became a leading pulp and paper producer, and much of
this manufacturing was located along the Penobscot River at sites
used for water power and process water. The first pulp and paper
mills apeared on the river in 1882, and several other mills were
operating by 1889, producing a daily total of 470,000 pounds of
pulp and 80,000 pounds of paper.
Like the lumber industries in the past, the mills built or
maintained dams along the Penobscot to provide power and an even
flow of water to transport pulp wood to the mills. These
impoundments further restricted the migration and spawning
patterns of the Penobscot"s fisheries resource.
In addition, the high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD)—a
measure of the organic matter in water which consumes oxygen
during biological processes that break it down—characteristic of
pulp and paper making discharges further lowered the river's
dissolved oxygen levels, often beyond the survival point of the
fish. The Penobscot's other sport and commercial fish—shad,
alewives, smelt and striped bass—which managed to enter the
river, were often killed by toxic chemicals in the mill effluents.
Pollution Along the Penobscot River in the Twentieth Century
As recently as 1967, the Penobscot River received the untreated
wastes of approximately 32,000 people living in Millinocket, East
Millinocket, Lincoln, Rowland, Harapden, Bucksport, Mil ford, Orono,
Veazie and Old Town. A primary treatment plant at Bangor, the first
municipal treatment facility along the river, became operational in
1968. The Bangor plant, however, provided inadequate treatment for
domestic wastes from that city's 33,000 residents.
During this period, the Penobscot also received untreated
industrial wastes discharged non-stop from seven pulp and paper
mills at Millinocket, East tiillinocket, Lincoln, Brewer, Bucksport,
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and at Old Town, where two mills were located. These discharges
contained spent pulping liquor from the Kraft and sulfite processes,
and process waters containing fiber fillers and coatings. Many of
these wastes had extremely high concentrations of suspended solids.
According to water monitoring studies conducted by the State of
Maine Water Improvement Commission in 1964, the pollution loading
placed on the entire Penobscot River in terms of BOD was one million
pounds per day, or the equivalent untreated domestic sewage load
produced in one day by about 5,000,000 people. These studies also
showed that dissolved oxygen levels were depressed to levels as low
as zero along parts of the Penobscot. Maine's water quality
standard for dissolved oxygen in these waters is at least 5 parts
per million.
In view of this gross environmental degradation, the Commission
rated the Penobscot River as a Class D Stream, which only required
that the odor not cause a nuisance.
The loss of Atlantic salmon, the Penobscot's most valued
commercial species, presents a clear picture of the heavy toll
exacted over the years by the lumber and pulp and paper making
processes. Records dating back to the 1850's show that commercial
fishermen caught approximately 25,000 salmon annually. By 1875S the
annual salmon catch had dropped to 15,000, to 12,000 between 1873
and 1900, and to 2,500 in 1910. In 1947, the last year commercial
fishing was allowed, the commercial catch from the Penobscot was 40
salmon caught on rod. Between 1957 and 1967, no Atlantic salmon
were taken from the Penobscot.
By then, the quantity of shad, alewives, striped bass and smelt
in these waters was also severely reduced*,
It was zero hour for the Penobscot River. Trash, foam and
stinking paper mill sludge rafts, the byproducts of industrial and
municipal pollution floated downstream or lodged on the shoreline.
And because of these nuisance conditions, the river—which had been
used less and less for recreation since 1890—was avoided by
boaters, fishermen and nature lovers.
LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL CLEANUP ACTIONS
In 1967, the Maine Legislature enacted Title 38, Section 451,
the Maine Revised Statutes Annotated. This legislation required
that water quality standards be assigned to Maine's waterways and
made it illegal to discharge any material into a state waterway
which lowered water quality below an assigned water quality
classification.
Acting under this authority, Maine's Water and Air Improvement
Commission developed water quality standards and submitted a
classification system for all of Maine's waters to the State
Legislature. The Commission then reclassified the Penobscot River
as a Class C waterway—suitable for all water contact recreation
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except swimming, an excellent fish and wildlife habitat, and
acceptable for water supply after treatment and disinfection. The
Commission then issued licenses to all the industries and
municipalities along the river, requiring that they construct,
operate, and maintain pollution abatement facilities by 1976 and
that construction be started by 1973.
Responding to the State of Maine's requirement that Class C
water quality be achieved along the Penobscot River, the Great
Northern Paper Company, the biggest industrial discharger to the
Upper Penobscot River, was the first industry to achieve major water
quality improvements.
According to Great Northern Paper Company Environmental
Protection Supervisor Patrick H. Welch, "In 1969, we initiated
process changes to our pulp and paper making facilities by
constructing a sulfite recovery process at our Millinocket mill. We
also discontinued the Chemi-Groundwood pulping process which
discharged large quantities of organic oxygen-demanding process
wastes to the river at our East Millinocket mill.
"In 1972, the company constructed a primary waste treatment
plant at the Millinocket mill. This facility removes all settleable
solids, and 80 to 90 percent of suspended solids from the mill's
waste waters.
"By the end of 1972," Welch says, "we discontinued our log
drives on the Penobscot. Since then, we get our softwood logs by
rail or truck. We now have fresher, higher quality wood because the
time between cutting it and shipping it to the mill has been cut
considerably.
"Then in 1975," Welch continues, "we constructed a primary
waste treatment plant at our East Millinocket mill. Like the
primary plant at Millinocket, this facility also removes all
settleable solids, and 80 to 90 percent of suspended solids from
this mill's waste water.
"Finally," Welch says, "in 1976 we constructed an aerated
secondary waste treatment plant at both the Millinocket and East
Millinocket mills. These secondary facilities receive the treated
effluent from the primary plants and remove 60 to 90 percent of the
BOD in their discharges to the Penobscot River."
The annual cost of operating Great Northern's primary and
secondary treatment plants is $5.5 million. The company's total
cost for in-house waste treatment facilities constructed between
1969 and 1976 is $34.5 million.
"This substantial investment in water quality improvement has
really paid off," Welch emphasizes. "Before 1969, the overall BOD
loading to the Upper Penobscot River from the Great Northern Paper
Company mills was 4.00,000 pounds per day. By 1970, it had dropped
to 100,000 pounds per day, and to 35,000 pounds per day, or less,
after 1976, depending on seasonal conditions.
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"Because of our cleanup efforts, there have also been
significant reductions of total suspended solids in our treated
discharges to the river," Welch concludes. "Before 1972, the Great
Northern Paper Company discharged 160,000 pounds per day of total
suspended solids to the Penobscot. After 1972, when our primary
facility at Millinocket went on line, the company discharged 80,000
pounds per day to these waters, then 50,000 pounds per day after
1975. After 1976, the amount of total suspended solids to the river
from our manufacturing operations dropped to 34,000 pounds per day,
or less, depending on seasonal conditions."
Starting in 1973, the five other pulp and paper mills along the
Penobscot spent nearly $50 million to construct pollution control
systems to provide clarification (reducing the concentration of
suspended matter in water), and aeration (using oxygen to break down
organic wastes). As construction progressed, state water quality
representatives met with industry, offered recommendations and
technical advice, and verified that compliance schedules were met.
All of these industrial treatment facilities were on line by
1976, with the exception of Lincoln Pulp and Paper, which was a few
months late.
During this period, the state Water and Air Improvement
Commission— known after 1969 as the Environmental Improvement
Commission and, since 1972, as the Maine Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP)—developed a monitoring program to ensure that
these abatement actions were improving the Penobscot's water
quality. State water quality experts monitored the river's water
quality and the quality of industrial and municipal discharges to
determine if Maine's standards were being met.
Concurrently, state technical specialists conducted long-term
planning studies to determine the need for future municipal and
industrial waste treatment, based on projected population and
industrial growth in the Penobscot River Valley.
In 1968, the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration,
the predecessor agency to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), awarded the Town of Orono $1.4 million to construct a
conventional activated sludge secondary treatment plant designed to
provide treatment for 1.8 million gallons per day (MGD) of Orono's
municipal wastes. On line in 1970, this facility removes 85 percent
of the BOD and suspended solids in its discharges to the Penobscot
River.
On October 1, 1972, Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution
Control Act Amendments of 1972 which overhauled previous water
quality legislation and began the most comprehensive program of
water pollution control in the nation's history by mandating a
sweeping federal and state effort to clean up the nation's rivers
and lakes.
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Acting under Section 201 of the landmark 1972 Water Act,
between 1973 and 1979 the EPA awarded a total of $14 million to the
communities of Brewer, Old Town, Mil ford, Millinocket and the Town
of Lincoln Sanitary District to construct three conventional
activated sludge secondary treatment plants which remove 85 to 90
percent of the BOD and suspended solids in their discharges, an
aerated lagoon, and ancillary equipment such as sewer interceptor
systems, pumping stations and force mains.
With one exception, these facilities were on line in 1978. The
treatment facility under construction at the Lincoln Sanitary
District—a 1.07 MGD capacity activated sludge secondary treatment
plant—is projected to be on line in late 1981.
' Finally, at this writing the EPA is about to award the City of
Bangor $1.5 million to construct the Penobscot Interceptor Sewer
System to divert untreated wastes presently being discharged to the
Penobscot River through the city's existing primary treatment plant.
This system is expected to go on line in 1982.
The EPA, in addition, recently funded several Facilities
Planning Studies under Section 201 of the 1972 Water Act.
Between 1976 and 1979, the EPA awarded the communities of
Bradley, Veazie , Rowland, Bucksport, Mattawamkeag, Orono, Hampden ,
and East Millinocket a total of $272,500 to find alternative
treatment methods to prevent the discharge of untreated wastes to
the Penobscot River. Then, in March 1979, the EPA awarded the City
of Bangor $111,000 to conduct a Section 201 Facilities Planning
Study to determine best methods for updating that city's present
primary treatment plant to secondary status. Once Bangor's updated
secondary treatment facility and the Penobscot Interceptor Sewer
System are constructed and operational, municipal wastes from the
Towns of Hampden and Veazie will be diverted to the Bangor waste
treatment system.
Section 402 of the 1972 Water Act established the National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Implemented by the
EPA and the states, this system defines the requirements for
developing permits which regulate the discharge of pollutants into
the nation's waterways.
Acting under this authority, the Maine DEP identified each
industrial and municipal polluter along the Penobscot River and
recommended appropriate cleanup actions.
Between 1978 and 1979, the EPA and the DEP issued permits under
the NPDES Program to five major industrial dischargers and eight
minor industrial dischargers along the Penobscot River. During the
same period, the EPA and the DEP also issued NPDES permits to eight
major municipal dischargers and to five minor municipal dischargers
along the river.
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FISHWAY CONSTRUCTION ALONG THE PENOBSCOT
In 1965, Congress passed the Anadromous Fish Conservation Act
which made federal assistance available to restore anadromous fish
(species which spawn in fresh water, but grow and mature in salt
water). Funds were not made available until 1968.
Between 1968 and 1977, the Maine Atlantic Sea-Run Salmon
Commission under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of
the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service and the Maine Department of
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife worked to restore the Penobscot's
Atlantic salmon, alewife, smelt and shad fisheries.
Funds provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the
authority of the 1965 Act, and matched by the dam owners, allowed
fishways to be constructed at each of the obstructions along the
Penobscot to give the river's anadromous fish access to ancestral
spawning and nursery areas as far upstream as Mattagaramon Lake on
the Penobscot's East Branch. Fishways were also constructed along
the Piscataquis River, a major tributary to the Penobscot.
"During this construction period," says Atlantic Sea-Run Salmon
Commission Chief Biologist Alfred Meister, "the Salmon Commission
collected a brood stock of Atlantic salmon and stocked the Penobscot
with juvenile salmon reared by the Maine Department of Inland
Fisheries and Wildlife, and the U. . Fish and Wildlife Service in
state and federal hatcheries.
"Because of this ten-year, state and federal program,
increasing numbers of anadromous fish have returned to the
Penobscot," Meister concludes. "The river's fisheries have improved
in populations of Atlantic salmon and alewives and now support a
sport fishery. However, shad eggs have been largely unavailable and
restocking the Penobscot with this species has not been as
extensive."
Launching the salmon restoration program during the years when
the Penobscot was still polluted was possible because salmon smolt
(young salmon at the migratory stage) migrate immediately to the
ocean during the spring of their release and remain there for two
years before returning to fresh water. Returns of salmon from these
early catches were netted at Bangor and at Veazie just north of
Bangor, then stripped of their eggs for hatching. The smolt were
then restocked and the cycle was resumed. By the mid-1970's water
quality improved to the point that salmon could make it on their own
upriver to spawn. Some salmon are still trapped and stripped,
however, to keep the hatchery program going.
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NONPOINT SOURCE POLLUTION CLEANUP
ACTIONS ALONG THE PENOBSCOT
According to state water quality experts, pollution from
nonpoint sources—for examplei agriculture—could be a remaining
problem along the Penobscot River.
In early 1976, the EPA awarded the DEP $405,000 to develop
Section 208 water quality management plans for Maine's previously
non-designated areas. During November, 1976, the DEP awarded the
Penobscot Valley Regional Planning Commission $87,864 from these
funds to develop a Section 208 non-designated water quality
management plan to identify and assess land uses in the organized
townships lying within the Penobscot River Basin which were
impacting water quality by other than point source discharges.
The Commission's nonpoint assessment centered primarily on
agriculture, private waste disposal, solid and residual waste
disposal, and silviculture (activities related to the care and
development of forests). The Commission's staff representatives
identified existing and potential regulatory programs and agencies
that were best suited to control specific cases of land use which
the Commission identified as impacting water quality in the
Penobscot River Basin.
Based on the results of these assessments, the Commission has
made recommendations to the DEP which, if implemented, will have a
positive effect on the water quality of the lakes and tributary
streams along the Penobscot River. The bulk of the Commission's
recommendations center on improved and increased enforcement of
existing regulations and technology, rather than on developing new
regulations.
The Maine DEP is currently implementing portions of the
Commission's recommendations.
RESULTS
According to DEP Bureau of Water Quality Control Director
Stephen W. Groves, "as a direct result of combined local, state and
federal cleanup actions, the Penobscot River had improved by 1977 to
the point that the entire river met or exceeded Maine's Class C
water quality standard.
"Our monitoring studies conducted that year showed that the
overall BOD loading to these waters had dropped from the one
million-pound-per-day load recorded in 1964 to approximately 200,000
pounds per day, an impressive 80 percent reduction achieved between
1969 and 1977. We project that the BOD loading to the river will
drop even lower—to 100,000 pounds per day in 1983.
"Moreover," Groves says, "during the same period, dissolved
oxygen levels along the entire Penobscot rose from the zero levels
recorded along portions of the river in 1964 to 5 parts per million,
or even greater, along the entire Penobscot."
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With water quality improving visibly along this once highly
degraded stream, and encouraged by the return of sport and
commercial fish to these waters, fishermen in large numbers
concentrate on the Penobscot to catch alewives, smelt, striped
bass—and especially Atlantic salmon.
"Fantastic1s the only word I can find to describe the 1978
Atlantic salmon season at the Bangor Salmon Pool," says Roger
D'Errico, former president of the Sunkhaze Stream Chapter of Trout
Unlimited.
"In 1978, we put 343 Atlantic salmon on the record books," adds
D'Errico who also chairs the Penobscot Salmon Club's Historic
Committee. "The Atlantic Sea-Run Salmon Commission estimated that a
total of 2,000 adult salmon moved upriver in 1978, and predicted
that the salmon run at the Bangor Salmon Pool would continue to
improve."
For reasons yet to be explained, 1979 was a comparatively poor
year for taking Atlantic salmon.
"But in 1980," D'Errico says, "a rod count in the neighborhood
of 1,000 was recorded in the Bangor and nearby Veazie areas."
Are the record catches of Atlantic salmon from the Penobscot
River a one-time thing?
"Definitely not," says the Atlantic Sea-Run Salmon Commission's
Alfred Meister. "Right now, we're stocking salmon each year in the
Penobscot River Watershed. These salmon come primarily from the new
Green Lake National Fish Hatchery near Ellsworth recently
constructed at a cost of $7 million. It is the largest Atlantic
salmon hatchery in the world and we plan to stock 40,000 to 500,000
salmon a year from this facility. Currently, we have fishways in
all major dams on the Penobscot so that fish have access to spawning
and nursery areas In the headwaters."
Just a few short years ago, boaters and cancers stayed away
from the Penobscot for fear of fouling their craft with waterborne
filth. Now they're returning, along with other recreational
enthusiasts who welcome the fact that the obnoxious stink of sludge
rafts along these waters no longer degrades the river and its
shores. Picnickers and hikers are enjoying the land along the
Penobscot and people are buying riverfront homes and property for
summer or permanent residency.
"Water cleanup has also brought tlaine some healthy construction
payrolls," says Groves. "Contractors estimate that labor costs
represent about 30 percent of the construction dollar- A quick
computation based on this assumption shows that construction workers
along the Penobscot River and other Maine waterways have earned
about $200 million from joint state and EPA water cleanup programs.
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"In addition," Groves concludes, "construction of treatment
plants and other waste treatment systems has created many new
permanent jobs in the Penobscot River Valley. More than 375 people
in Maine—at least 20 of them work today in the valley—have been
processed by the treatment plant operator's programs, and most of
them have graduated from Southern and Eastern Maine vocational
technical schools."
Success stories in print:
Buffalo River, New York
Beaver Creek, Tennessee
Chena River and Noyes Slough
Fairbanks, Alaska
Deerfield River, Massachusetts
Detroit River, Michigan
Dillon Reservoir Colorado
Rocky Mountains
Escambia Bay; Florida
Grove and Center Creeks, Missouri
Hackensack River and Its
Meadowlands, New Jersey
Haley Pond, Maine
Kodiak Harbor, Alaska
Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota
Lower Houston Ship Channel and
Galveston Bay, Texas
Mohawk River, New York
Monongahela River, West Virginia
and Pennsylvania
Naugatuck and Lower Housatonic
Rivers, Connecticut
Neches River Tidal Area, Texas
Ogden Bay, Great Salt Lake,
Utah
Pearl River near Bogalusa,
Louisana
Pemigewasset River, New Hampshire
Penobscot River, Maine
Roseberry Creek, Alabama
Sope Creek, Cobb County, Georgia
St. Johns River, Florida
St. Petersburg, Florida
Westfield River, Massachusetts
Willamette River Oregon
Yellowstone National Park,
Wyoming
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