Upstream

PITTSBURGH -- Napoleon had Waterloo. The Ravens have Three Rivers.Custer had Little Big Horn. The Ravens have Three Rivers."When you are going to play the Pittsburgh Steelers at Three Rivers Stadium, you know you are going into a war zone," Ravens assistant coach Earnest Byner said."

GUILIN, China -- After nearly a week visiting the modern cities of Beijing and Shanghai, President Clinton will spend tomorrow in rural South China floating down the Li River past the lush, limestone mountains that comprise some of the nation's most spectacular scenery.To many visitors, this stretch of river epitomizes the Chinese countryside where most of China's 1.2 billion people still live. Farmers wade through rice paddies in conical hats and fishermen on bamboo rafts use diving cormorants to catch carp as they have for a thousand years.

DEMOLISHING a working hydroelectric power plant, a proven generator of "clean air" electricity, might seem to be environmental folly these days.But there is sound basis for the historic decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission not to renew the license of a 160-year-old power dam on the Kennebec River in Maine. In this case, the old textile mill dam was costing more in damage to the river and its fisheries than the worth of the power it produced.Fishways and other changes to the Augusta dam would be needed to permit the upstream passage of spawning salmon and sturgeon beyond the dam. The cost would be prohibitive, the hydroelectric power output minimal.

Burning away the early morning mist, the sun's orange reflection danced on the Pocomoke River's ripples.No boats obstructed the view, no people spoke; only sea gulls squawked and insects buzzed in the green reeds lining the banks.The lower Pocomoke's beauty and peace are striking. But below the surface, a microorganism -- Pfiesteria piscicida -- has been killing thousands of fish and sickening dozens of people.And in the same way -- from the small, white farmhouses to sidewalks where neighbors chat -- life along the Pocomoke has been tainted by its ills.

The annual spawning run of shad and herring has ended on the Susquehanna River, and the fish lifts at Conowingo Dam recorded transport upriver of 103,945 American shad, a 70 percent increase over the record set in 1995.The east lift at Conowingo operated for 58 days and passed 90,071 American shad, 242,900 blue-back herring, 1,015 striped bass and 384,400 others, mostly gizzard shad.The average daily catch was 1,568, but during the peaks of the run on May 4, 9 and 18, catches ranged from 6,395 to 6,725.

The hen and the drake mallard banked low around the point, dropped their feet as if to land and, before the specter of an unusual intruder, flogged away over the marshy backwater a mile or so upstream from the dam at Tuckahoe Lake.Red-winged blackbirds chattered nosily. Great blue herons stalked the shallows patiently. Frogs called from deep cover. Northern water snakes swam the edges of the spatterdock.And another largemouth bass had hit a crank bait and was taking line.Tuckahoe Lake is one of those curious places in Maryland, off the beaten path in Caroline County and at first glance a basin to control water runoff from surrounding farmland.

BRUNSWICK -- The Canada goose had picked its spot carefully, choosing a rocky islet 30 yards out in the swift current of the Potomac River, where probably it expected few creatures to threaten the clutch of eggs tucked beneath her in a nest lined with down plucked from her breast.Yet last week, an intruder passed close by, casting plastic grubs for smallmouth bass, and the goose curled its neck low along the nest until its bill lay close to the small patch of soil captured among the rocks.

"I have stocked 10-pound trout out of this hatchery and, in fact, the state records for cut-throat and brown trout were caught just a bit downstream from the site shown on this slide."Mike Dean, a Department of Natural Resources project manager, was showing the pictures at last Thursday's gathering of the Patapsco Valley Trout Unlimited chapter.Dean is in charge of the increasingly famous North Branch of the Potomac River. A few years ago, this part of the Potomac, which stretches from Jennings Randolph Lake in Garrett County to the Cumberland vicinity, was essentially sterile -- lifeless.

DETOUR -- Occasional floods have become a way of life in this low-lying village along Double Pipe Creek, but residents here say recent floods -- including the one a week ago -- have been made worse by floating debris from a junkyard upstream from the Route 77 bridge."

TUCKAHOE STATE PARK -- Larry Leasner doesn't know why some kinds of fish swim hundreds of miles upstream to spawn in the spring. But he's helping them anyway, building "fish ladders" that help them scale dams and other blockages in Maryland's rivers."