Bar Harbor watersheds at risk? Conservationists blanch at impact of giant development proposal

OTHER NEWS: Progress in Otter Creek land return; Jellisons stop volunteer work at skating pond; DTE defaults on PERC bid

BAR HARBOR, Nov. 11, 2023 - We had a lot of rain this year, no one doubted.

But the severity of the rainfall was in its own league. One weekend in October, my prosaic rain gauge recorded 7 inches over 48 hours. That’s after many rain events of more than 4 inches this year.

It was downright subtropical, like Taiwan, where I grew up, and where the annual rainfall averaged 100 inches.

2023 heavy rainfall days through September. Average heavy rain events a year in Maine is 10. Source: NewscenterMaine.com

Why should we care on MDI?

Doesn’t it all just drain into Frenchman Bay, Somes Sound and Blue Hill Bay?

Yes.

But heavy rainfall drives one third of the nitrogen dumped into those bodies of water, according to a 2020 study of similar activity.

“Degraded water quality is the most obvious result, but the onslaught of nutrients has a more insidious effect,” stated American Scientist. “Fertilizer runoff causes coastal algae to proliferate; the algae take most of the oxygen in the water, causing fish to die and disrupting the food chain for humans and other organisms.”

(Ask any fisherman in these parts how they view nitrogen’s effect on eel grass.)

Moreover, heavy rainfall, defined as more than 1.5 inches a day, is expected to increase by 52 percent in the Northeast by the end of the century, according to a Dartmouth study.

In 2010, the park service and the US Geological Survey recorded an unexpected spike in nitrogen loading into MDI’s Northeast Creek - a 66 percent jump when they expected a 7 percent increase caused by wet weather.

“This increase is likely primarily a result of the prevalence of much wetter conditions during the 2008–11 sampling period than during the earlier sampling period,” their final report stated. “The new loading estimates also support the possibility that some portion of the increase in nitrogen loading results from the observed land-use changes, and that the increase in residential housing has, in fact, contributed to the observed increase in nitrogen loading.”

“It really speaks to a need for some climate change adaptation in how we are planning,” said Jane Disney, MDI Bio Labs scientist and former member of the Town Council and cruise ship committee.

Instead of heeding these warnings, the town Planning Board allowed a development binge to start in 2010.

Since 2020, the lion’s share of development activity in town has been in the western, rural area closest to the four watersheds apart from the densely populated downtown village separated by Acadia National Park.

A total of 67 houses on 209 acres of subdivided parcels were approved, with another 10 units on 59 acres pending approval. On top of that, more than 20 acres of forest were clear cut on land permitted to do so by the town.

Now comes one of the largest proposed subdivisions in town history, on Crooked Road, where a Massachusetts couple bought a 207-acre parcel, tried to flip it for a quick resale, and failing that, is proposing to create 14 lots on one of the most sensitive ecological areas on the island.

This has preservationists and naturalists alarmed at its size and at the town’s indifference to the future of its watersheds.

They pointed to a stout body of work in 2014, the Bar Harbor Open Space Plan, updated in 2020, and which concluded that the responsibility for preserving the island’s special natural state is not just that of Acadia National Park alone.

“By creating systems and planning that allows for smart development, we can still protect essential habitat needed by plants and animals, protect wetlands, vernal pools, and valuable groundwater- all of which don't adhere to political boundaries,” the plan concluded.

That plan arrived at a time when the Town Council was chaired by Paul Paradis, father of the modern cruise ship business in Bar Harbor and who, in 2010, was co-developer of a 10-unit subdivision in Hull’s Cove while a sitting council member. Paradis set a precedent for others, including sitting Planning Board member Joe Cough, who received board approval for his 12-unit subdivision in Salsbury Cove in 2021, and former PB Chair Tom St. Germain, whose controversial 44-room “bed and breakfast” on Cottage Street was approved by the code enforcement officer in 2022.

“When you get people who are on planning board or on town council and they know how the system works and they know how to work around it,” Disney said.

“And that's why they're on these things because they were trying to figure their angles and then technically they've managed to work their way through to what they want. It's hard for neighbors and abutters and community members to really pull together the same resources.”

The Open Space Plan was never adopted by the council. In 2020, the council finally “accepted” the plan. The town is also operating without an updated Comprehensive Plan.

The applicant for the giant subdivision is a couple, Christopher and Denise Bettencourt, from Uxbridge, Mass., who acquired the land in June 2021 for $1,520,200 from Millicent Carey, according to Hancock County deed records.

The lot on Crooked Road across from Fern Meadow Drive was briefly on the market with an asking price of $4.9 million. When that failed, they turned to their current plan, hiring local Landscape architect Perry Moore as their agent. Moore did not return two messages on his voicemail.

Moore also represented Joe Cough in his Salsbury Cove subdivision. That alone should disqualify Cough from voting on this application, but, hey, this is Bar Harbor, where the fastest gunslinger to walk through those saloon doors has the last say.

In his application, Moore wrote,

“The project proposes to build a subdivision road and divide the parcel into 14 residential lots and set aside 12 acres as open space. Subject property is 179.24 acres, located on the southern side of Crooked Road, generally between the sharp curve west of Gemstone Way to the intersection with Fern Meadow Drive.

Of course, the applicant would need plenty of brotherly love from the Planning Board to make this project economically viable, including a conditional approval of the application before any of the necessary DEP and Army Corps of Engineering permits are approved.

That way the project may proceed in phases, as cash flow from one phase will feed the next. Planning associate Cali Martinez explained how this arrangement was also in place for the 10-lot Harbor Light’s subdivision in Hull’s Cove and other projects.

All this pro-business and pro-development push by Planning Director Michele Gagnon has some residents on edge, with colossal implications like the death of our watersheds, which Jane Disney said, would be difficult from which to recover once they reach a certain point of degradation.

Former Conservation Commission member Michael Handwerk, who had a major role in the Open Space Plan, questioned the lack of detail on tidal influence and other crucial impact in the application for “Brigadoon,” the Crooked Road project.

“You need to know what is your tidal influences on the property, your water table level. I look at a lot of the marine life that flows in and out from the sea, and it goes into our wetlands.

“You really have to have open space for the wetlands for it to thrive. And any kind of demarcation - whether it's a road or a house - would impact that to a certain extent.

“They can't just throw houses all over the place. With septic sewers and wells that need water … It changes not only the topography of the area, but the water table. And so people got to look at the greatest impact, whether it's 10 years down the road or whatever, but they got to look at what 14 different areas of housing will be, when you fill them up with homes.

“I haven't seen any information about anybody caring about microscopic marine life or wildlife or wildlife crossings.”

Lucian Smith, member of the Conservation Commission who owns 30 acres nearby, said, “When you're clearing these lots, you're actually like clearing large areas of trees. It’s crazy. We need that to slow the rainfall.

“This this is going to get really bad quickly. I don't think people have internalizing the changes I've seen just in the last 20 years here. It's radical.”

“Planning Board members are unbelievably dismissive of wetlands and their core value and importance to the point of not being able to have logical discussions about them,” stated naturalist Michael Good, who lives in the Town Hill area. (Good and 10 other residents successfully sued the town and overturned its 2020 charter changes.)

“We were shocked that there was no indication on the site plan about the Flood Plain on the Crooked Road, which can be quite extensive with large rainfalls and snow melt,” Good wrote on Facebook. He said he attended the board’s recent on-site inspection Nov. 2 but that chair Millard Dority was only interested in hearing from abutting neighbors.

“The first phase would involve Lots 1 through 5. Lots 1 and 5 would be offered for sale upon filing of the plat with the registry and confirmation of lot monuments having been set as detailed in §125-85.A.,” Moore wrote in the application.

“The second phase would involve constructing the subdivision road to the first cul-de-sac with a gravel surface and allow for sale of lots 6, 7 and 8. The third phase would be the construction of the road to the second cul-de-sac and sale of the remainder of the lots.

“The final phase would involve correcting the road surface for grade and compaction then paving it. The section from Crooked Road to the first cul-de-sac is anticipated to be dedicated as a Town road, with the portion between the first and second culde-sac to be a private road governed by a homeowner’s association.”

“There continues to be a total blindness in the Bar Harbor planning department about the value and importance for sensitive habitat that are proposed for destruction through poor planning,” Good stated.

“Relaxing wetland regulations does NOT benefit the affordable housing market......it only benefits the top market because all of the wetlands and WETLAND MITIGATION that is needed on some of these ecologically sensitive properties is Expensive,” Good wrote on Facebook.

“What is frustrating to us as marine scientists is that these problems are preventable,” American Scientist stated. “Human development and healthy ecosystems do not have to be at odds if communities think about sustainability.”

Maine senators send envoys in response to Otter Creek Landing request from town manager

OTTER CREEK - Town Manager Durlin Lunt is making progress in his quest to take back land from the federal government to allow better access to the town landing here.

Representatives for Maine senators Angus King and Susan Collins responded to Lunt’s Oct. 2 letter with an on-site visit which Lunt hosted on Nov. 8.

Lunt heard from Christina Breen, King’s regional representative, that the senator would like the gift of federal land to be as small as possible and yet achieve the goal of allowing vehicles to turn around at the landing.

“The establishment of a narrow as opposed to a broad precedent may allay these concerns,” Lunt stated in a letter Nov. 9 to Breen and to Collins’s representative Carol Woodcock, thanking them for their visit.

The tone was much more conciliatory than his first letter which clearly got their attention. Lunt had written to urge the U.S. Park Service “work closely with the Town of Mount Desert to begin the process of addressing past injustices to the village of Otter Creek.”

Lunt stated a bill of particulars dating back to when the park was founded in 1919 as the Lafayette National Park.

“Through such actions as denying the right of vehicular egress to the water through the Blackwoods Campground, denying access to fresh water at the shores, refusing to allow vista clearing at the Town Landing, construction of a causeway on the Park Loop Road, with limited tidal flushing capacity with the stated intent of turning the harbor of Otter Creek into a swimming pool - a bitter irony for an agency charged with the preservation of natural resources - and withholding the rights of Otter Creek residents to full access to and the ability to maintain traditional and historical village roads and paths.”

For now, the town is only seeking better access for the landing so more Otter Creek residents may use it.

Here is the original article I published on the matter in early October.

How MDI voted on citizens’ power question

TREMONT - The two towns with the worst electrical grid on MDI also voted to keep Versant operating as their power company in Tuesday’s statewide referendum.

Tremont voted 262 yes and 285 no on Article 3 to strip ownership of Maine’s two power companies in favor of one publicly controlled by citizens. Southwest Harbor voted 278 yes and 346 no on Article 3.

Bar Harbor voted 1,074 in favor and 854 no. Mount Desert voted 441 yes and 344 no.

The island voted 2,055-1,829 in favor of Article 3, which got only 30 percent of the votes statewide.

Jellisons blow whistle on volunteers attempting to trim vegetation at skating pond

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - The prince and princess of chaos, Jeorge Jellison and his sister Aimee Jellison Williams, are back on the agenda for the select board meeting Tuesday with yet another grievance.

This time their targets are the volunteers who annually trim the overgrown vegetation at Chris’s Pond so that skaters would have fewer obstruction during the winter.

The Jellisons told Town Manager Marilyn Lowell the DEP would have concerns about unpermitted maintenance of a waterway.

Dutifully, Lowell issued this memo Friday:

“It was brought to my attention that a group of people were using a small bush hog to the vegetation in and around the pond on Saturday, November 4^th. When they were asked by a resident if they had permission, they said yes but were unable to give a name. They said they always did it. This is posing a large problem if the DEP feels there were to be permits and they were not applied for who will be paying the fines and penalties that will surely follow? This situation needs to be managed before the Town is put into a position not of their making.”

“Large problem?”

“Penalties that will surely follow?”

Read like sounds bites fed to the town manager by you know who.

If a municipal government can be shut down like the federal government, George Jellison surely would find a way.

FOOTNOTE: The select board will be asked to approve the resignation of Deputy Town Clerk Ashlie Brown, who served less than six months.

Delta Thermo defaults on bid for PERC plant

ORRINGTON - It surprised no one Friday when it was announced that Delta Thermo Energy could not come up with the balance of the deposit required to hold their winning bid for the incineration plant here.

A new auction will be held Tuesday Nov. 14.

“The Keenan Auction Company has been informed that the high bidder from the November 2, 2023  auction that was held for the above referenced property has defaulted on the auction contract,” auctioneer Stefan Keenan announced.

DTE also forfeited its $50,000 deposit made only a week ago.

The company had bid $1.5 million but could not come up with the balance of the 10 percent deposit.

In 2021, DTE was the choice of the bondholders of the Fiberight plant as its new operator but also could not raise the necessary funds to restart the plant in Hampden which then was acquired by the 115-town Municipal Review Committee. The Hampden plant, which has been closed since May 2020, was sold this year to Innovative Resource Recovery which is trying to reopen it by 2025.

The incinerator here, Penobscot Energy Recovery Company, was a temporary lifeline for waste disposal in the region until it also ran into financial problems and was forced into auction.

Another bidder Marc David Green Solutions of Sarasota expressed interest and is expected to make a bid Tuesday.

But the winner will have only to Nov. 21 to close the purchase because an automatic foreclosure by the Town of Orrington kicks in on Nov. 27 for the unpaid taxes of 2021, of about $200,000. The town office is closed for Thanksgiving Nov. 23 and 24.