Salvaging Logs From the Penobscot

Thom Labrie and Bruce Loring of UnderWater Wood Specialists in Greene are harvesting timber at the bottom of the Penobscot River.

The wood — mostly pine — was cut by loggers and sent downriver for processing likely between the late 1700s and the 1970s. Logs that sank along the way were abandoned. Although the logs were extremely saturated, little else was wrong with them. The cold water kept them that way, preserved.

Enter Loring, the diver, and Labrie, the environmentalist with a background in the wood industry.

"I don't care if it's sitting in a building that's going to be demolished. I don't care if it's in a pallet. I don't care if it's under water. All the wood that's usable should be used before we cut down another tree," Labrie said. [Link]