Will Tremont pursue ordinance changes as moratorium ends? AWL still faces hurdles
Canadian salmon farming giant says East Coast may not be biologically suitable
TREMONT, Jan. 22, 2021 - An emotionally searing chapter of the battle for the town’s future came to an end Thursday night when the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously not to extend Concerned Tremont Residents’ six-month moratorium against campground development. See Video.
Chairman Jamie Thurlow conducted a low-key, thoughtful meeting. Speakers were on their best behavior. Even Becky Hopkins, the animated matriarch of the family behind the “glamping” proposal which has bitterly divided the town, was relatively composed.
Nonetheless, virtually everyone speaking in favor of ending the moratorium were members of the Hopkins family or paid lawyers and consultants. (QSJ still doesn’t understand what is keeping James and Kenya Hopkins from moving back to Maine, as they have repeatedly stated that).
The town could use a hiatus from the sturm and drang. But make no mistake. Nothing has been resolved, and there’s more to come.
Tremont is too beautiful and unspoiled to escape the clutches of other developers. The select board vote was another small step toward Tremont becoming the next Bar Harbor- unless the town makes it harder for that to happen.
That did not happen Thursday. Select board members are human. They care about their self interest first.
Such as Member Kevin Buck, who said:
“I’m having a really hard time feeling that extending this moratorium isn't aimed directly at AWL (Acadia Wilderness Lodge). But we don't need a moratorium to change the ordinance. I just don't see the justification for us to extend this moratorium.”
The Bucks had no problem “aiming directly” at AWL when they lived on Kelleytown Road. Buck and his wife lived on Kelleytown Road since 1996, according to county records. His wife was an ardent opponent of the campground and could not participate in AWL consideration when she was on the planning board.
She was removed by the select board in 2021 and replaced by another conflicted member, Beth Gott, who hasn’t been able to participate in AWL matters because her construction company was on the record seeking business from AWL.
But the Bucks cured their problem. They sold their property on Kelleytown Road for $395,000 on Sept. 10 - a hefty price demonstrating that the current real estate market will discount all risks.
They still have a building plus more than 10 acres on Kelleytown that abut to the campground.
Now they are living in Bass Harbor at the epicenter of another campground fight - Pointy Head. The lawyer for the proposed inn abutting the Bucks’s property asked the select board to remove Buck because of his “conflict” to which Buck said he’s never opposed Pointy Head publicly.
What are the chances of a select board member entangled in not one but two conflicts as an abutting neighbor to campgrounds? Did he throw his constituents under the bus?
It’s another sidebar in a sundry of such sordid tales.
The town’s attorney set the tone Thursday night when he all but made it impossible for the select board to vote otherwise by urging them to consider that the original problem - a massive 154 camping sites and 72 RVs - has been remedied.
James Collier is an unusually hyper-active barrister who takes it upon himself to impose and intervene without prompting. QSJ wrote about how he kept secret for 18 months his negotiations with a lawyer for one side of a disputed zoning fight in Mount Desert without telling his client, the planning board. You may read emails relating to that here.
QSJ asked him whether he had the same relationship with the lawyer for AWL who couldn’t have been happier with Collier’s preamble and invoked it, as did members of the select board, for why they were denying the moratorium extension. Collier didn’t answer.
All water under the dam? The currents are still roiling:
Tuesday night, when the Planning Board reconvenes to take up the issue of “campground standards,” will Chairman Mark Good be able to contain his pugilistic style to allow consideration of proposed ordinance changes proffered by CTR, to create a new category, “recreational lodging,” which would include campgrounds, glampgrounds, RVs.
Will the state courts deny or accept CTR’s motion for exemption from the ordinance that it did not submit appeal of the smaller campground on Kelleytown Road within the 30-day deadline because it did not know the code enforcement officer had approved increasing footage without planning board approval. If the court grants the exemption, the matter goes back to the appeals board.
How will the appeals board adjudicate the appeal to nullify the approval by the planning board of the larger AWL campground when it meets Feb. 17?
Will the state Site Location Development Act, which reviews projects occupying more than 20 acres, come into play? AWL started as a 43-acre project, then cut back to 20. But its boundaries are opague. If the law is invoked, we’re looking at a process which could be up to a year, given the backlog at the DEP. AWL has three years from Nov. 1, 2021 to show “substantial completion” of the project.
AWL’s smaller campground on Kelleytown road has a deadline of May for “substantial completion.” It has to deal with CTR’s appeal and workforce shortages during the winter months. The town has already given AWL1 an extension. A second extension would be highly unusual and political. But with this planning. board, anything is possible.
Lastly, CTR still has the petition card to play. Maine law gives citizens that right. CTR could yet petition that its proposed ordinance changes be adopted by a town meeting vote, and do it retroactively.
Long before Tremont had a select board, that’s how the town governed itself.
Footnote: CTR filed documents with both the select board and planning board on specific changes to the land-use ordinance, which would entail increasing minimum size for each camp site, extending setbacks and imposing a minimum overall size of a recreational lodging business. You may read a summary of the proposal here and detailed ordinance language here.
Salmon giant: biology of sustainable farming still unproven in Eastern Canada
SOMESVILLE - Two recent aquaculture news stories paint a very different picture for fish farming in the United States and Canada.
Canada-based Cooke Seafood won a major court victory last week in Washington when that state’s Supreme Court voted 9-0 to allow farming of Pacific steelhead trout in Puget Sound.
The court put much credence on 29 mitigating conditions in the issued permit to minimize or avoid adverse environmental impacts and cited the difference between salmon and steel head farming.
“A comparison of the Atlantic salmon renewal permit and the steelhead trout permit reveals the relative extent to which WDFW imposed conditions on Cooke’s steelhead permit aimed at mitigating any potential environmental impacts,” the judges wrote. (WDFW is the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.)
A more relevant story for Downeast was the announcement last week by salmon farming giant Mowi Norway that the extraordinary salmon mortalities in eastern Canada last year totaled more than 1.7 million fish, including 570,238 Atlantic salmon from its Deep Water Point site and 184,598 Atlantic salmon from the Little Burdock Cove site, as a result of a combination of sea lice pressure, treatments, and prolonged rough weather.
Separately, a die-off at a Marine Harvest Atlantic Canada site killed 489,000 fish at its Gorge farm in Newfoundland in September 2021, and in October, its farming sites in Little Bay, Chaleur Bay, and Friar Cove experienced mortalities of more than 210,000 salmon. Seaoodsource.com reported, “Collectively, these issues – and the resulting “disappointing” quarter it faced financially – pushed the company to delay a planned expansion of its salmon farming in Newfoundland.” The die-offs cost the company $9.1 million.
“Climate change will make water warmer, that makes fish less healthy,” said Henry Sharpe, chairman of Frenchman Bay United. “It also increases die-offs due to lack of oxygen (eutrophication) that basically occur because food waste that doesn't flush acts as fertilizer to trigger algal blooms.”
“Next, take a look at this website maintained by the Canadian government to track fish health: https://inspection.canada.ca/animal-health/aquatic-animals/diseases/reportable-diseases/isa/locations-infected/eng/1549521878704/1549521878969#wb-auto-4
“In 2020, it lists 20 outbreaks of ISA salmon virus. In 2021, there were 39, not quite 2x as many. ISA has no vaccine, no cure, and requires depopulating pens when discovered,” Sharpe wrote. “It's endemic in the waters of the eastern Atlantic (including Maine waters).
“In aquaculture pens, particularly larger, more dense pens, conditions for transmission are much better, and hence the incidence of disease is much higher.”
Apparently Mowi Norway agreed with Sharpe.
In November, the company announced it no longer will expand operations in Newfoundland until it can prove that salmon fishing there can be “biologically stable.”
The company has faced numerous problems since it took over the operations of Northern Harvest in 2018, CEO Ivan Vindheim said in a webcast.
“It’s no secret that we have faced a string of unfortunate biological incidents since the takeover of Northern Harvest in 2018, particularly in the Newfoundland area,” Vindheim said. “There’s still definitely a lot left to prove in this business unit.”
In Washington, the case to stop the steelhead trout farming was brought by Wild Fish Conservancy shortly after it won a $2.75 million settlement in 2019 against Cooke in a lawsuit invoking the Clean Water Act.
While the court decision this week was good news for Cooke, the Washington legislature had voted 31-16 in 2018 to begin phasing out salmon fishing in its waters, after the Cooke net pen collapse. This leaves Maine as the only state still allowing and considering salmon farming in its waters.
QSJ wrote the following email this week to Cindy Dionne of Division of Water Quality Management, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, but did not get a response:
“Dear Cindy Dionne,
Were you aware of the massive die-off of fish in eastern Canada last year around the same time Cooke lost 116,000 salmon at Black Island?
It was enough to prompt the company to halt its expansion plans https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/aquaculture/mowi-delays-newfoundland-expansion-after-multiple-biological-challenges.
Next, take a look at this website maintained by the Canadian government to track fish health: https://inspection.canada.ca/animal-health/aquatic-animals/diseases/reportable-diseases/isa/locations-infected/eng/1549521878704/1549521878969#wb-auto-4
In 2020, it lists 20 outbreaks of ISA salmon virus. In 2021, there were 39, not quite 2x as many.
How is the State of Maine monitoring this data and are your current policies and laws adequate for these increasing events?
The water is getting warmer. Are your policies current with climate change?
Thank you.
Lincoln Millstein”
That such a big company as Mowi Norway is having doubts about the future viability of salmon farming in the waters of the East Coast of North America should concern all investors, as QSJ reported last week.
“Some of you have heard Elon Musk talking about how ‘physics is the law, and everything else is a recommendation.’ In salmon farming, biology is the law … ” Mowi CEO Vindheim said.
FOOTNOTE:
Frenchman Bay United will conduct its first member information session of 2022, “American Aquafarms and Acadia National Park,” Tuesday at 5:30.
“In our first FBU member information meeting of the new year, we are pleased to highlight the important relationship between Acadia, Frenchman Bay, and surrounding communities with a panel of Park experts and advocates:
John Kelly, Management Assistant, Acadia National Park
David MacDonald, President and CEO, Friends of Acadia
Lauren Cosgrove, Senior Program Manager/Northeast Region, National Parks Conservations Association
Before taking your questions, each panel member will give a brief presentation about how their organization is responding to the threats posed by this industrial salmon farm. We’ll also have a quick update on permitting and the ongoing efforts to stop the project. You may become a member at https://www.frenchmanbayunited.org/.
The Zoom link for Tuesday is: https://mdibl-org.zoom.us/j/87546147926.
My kingdom for a nurse! Okay, how about just a $10,000 signing bonus?
BAR HARBOR - The Village Green is one of my favorite spots for “busking” - playing music for money in public which is illegal in Bar Harbor. (More on that later.)
Last summer, while hacking away at my Martin D-18, I spotted a fellow musician with a fiddle. So we joined up as an impromptu duet. She was a nurse working at MDI Hospital during the summer, an itinerant who bounces around the country sometimes making more money than doctors.
Which is the reason the local hospital has had to double its signing and retention bonuses to recruit nurses.
As the omicron variant becomes rampant, the nursing shortage can be felt throughout hospitals all across the nation. Nurses have been leaving their positions to pursue higher-paying jobs as travel nurses or they’re quitting, with the remaining staff stretched even more.
“The lure to travel and make a lot of money” have created an exodus of nurses during the pandemic, said hospital CEO Chrissi Maguire. “We had to pivot.”
Maguire said some employment agencies are commanding $200 to $300 an hour for travel nurses.
The signing bonus of $10,000 for a registered nurse in the MDI emergency room is twice what the hospital was offering previously, Maguire said, with $5,000 for passing an initial probation and $5,000 for retention after one year. It enabled three recent hires.
The hope is that after a year, the nurses develop an affinity for the culture of MDI Hospital “and find their place for professional growth,” Maguire said.
For some travel nurses, however, the pay isn’t enough.
“I don’t ever see myself not being a nurse, but I don’t know how long a body can sustain the work that we do at the bedside for 12 hours a day,” travel nurse Tayler Oakes told Business Insider. “How long your emotional and mental health can maintain seeing people die all the time from preventable things?”
According to a Trusted Health survey, 67 percent of nurses have felt that their mental health and well-being are not a priority for the healthcare industry. Travel nurses are often placed in unfamiliar settings, leaving behind their support network and making them feel a sense of loneliness.
“We’re tired — emotionally, physically, mentally tired,” Melanie Mead, an emergency department nurse told the Washington Post. “We’re all showing up, day after day. In the beginning, nurses were heroes. Today, we’re almost an afterthought.”
QSJ will be looking to jam next summer with travel nurses to give them a relief valve, assuming we won’t be running from Bar Harbor’s Finest. Courts across the country have struck down numerous local ordinances prohibiting busking as violations of free speech. Remember Farm Aid? Time for Nurse Aid!
No letup for covid cases on MDI; January as bad as December
Maine is a lagging indicator, as Covid cases which topped off in other regions have made their way to MDI in full force.
“We had 75 positive tests on the island in December. We only had three in July and 20 in December a year ago,” Maguire said. “This week we had a 23 percent positive rate (of those tested) versus .4 percent on July 3.”
Most of the cases are among the unvaccinated.
How will Bar Harbor hire/retain public service staff as cruise ships add 250,000 visitors?
BAR HARBOR - What does the town of Mount Desert’s new schedule for fire fighters have to do with this town and its cruise ship season?
Because in the fierce competition for front-line, essential workers, MD just upped its advantage which should worry every citizen here as this town is poised to tack on another 250,000 tourists in 2022.
Both the police and fire chiefs will tell you that recruitment and retention are their biggest worry. “We are not keeping our new hires,” Fire Chief Matt Bartlett wrote in a memo to the Town Council in December. “Most hires leave Bar Harbor for better schedules and commute time.”
‘In the past year we have lost staff to Ellsworth, Brewer and Bangor,” Bartlett wrote. All three offer a 42-hour work week as opposed to Bar Harbor’s 56-hour schedule. Tommy Chisholm, chief of the volunteer Southwest Harbor fire department, said he resigned from Bar Harbor to take a position with Bangor precisely because of the 42-hour work week.
You may soon add Mount Desert to that list. Its select board voted this week to add $1.29 million to its current budget of about $700,000 to staff four platoons and to recruit eight fire/ambulance personnel. (Mount Desert is assuming the services of Northeast Harbor Ambulance, a private service which is closing.)
The crisis is in all public service departments. Bar Harbor is near a breaking point for its public works, parks and recreation, police, fire and ambulance services, as outlined by department heads in memos requested by council member Jill Goldthwait. The reports came in just before Christmas and did not get much attention from the council.
Simple question: Why would any public service employee want to continue to work for a town which has unreasonable expectations when they can find similar work and compensation closer to home? Don’t be surpised to see a mass exodus of employees before the first ship arrives.
Last year the public works department “increased daily emptying of trash cans from 1x per day to 2x per day every day, including weekends,” Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt wrote in her memo. “Staff was discouraged from taking vacations.”
“Parklet and extra trash runs took away from time crews would have been doing activities such as ditching, cleaning storm drains, maintaining shoulders and roadways,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the town council continues to fiddle and diddle, giving no sign that its recent discussion with a martime lawyer provided any solace. The threat of legal action from the cruise ship industry has worked effectively. Only council member Gary Friedmann has stated strongly that he is willing to tangle in the courts.
The town council will once again discuss its authority to reduce cruise ship visits at its meeting in February, with the 2022 season only two months after that. Meanwhile, the crush of visitors could be a “nightmare,” said council member Joe Minutolo, as 2021 was already a record year pushing the town to its outer limits, when tourists were trapped on buses and cars for hours, lines queued out of every restaurant and residents feared coming into the village which was essentially a parking lot.
Val Peacock: Bar Harbor’s ‘Joe Manchin’
Town Council member Val Peacock has been described by fellow members as “thoughtful, smart, fair, conscientious and incredibly hard working.” You may add a new adjective: “obstructionist.” If 2022 is a full season for cruise ships, Peacock will bear most of the responsility.
To be sure, three council members - Matt Hochman, Erin Cough and Dobbs - have been consistent cruise ship supporters. They only came to the conclusion that the town needed to streamline passenger visits after voters stated overwhelmingly, “Hell no, we don’t want more cruise ships” last June.
But their acquiescence is incremental and grudging. They have given the industry what it wants - an unfettered 2022 season just like the good ‘ole days.
And they have Val Peacock to thank for that pliance.
She is the Joe Manchin of Bar Harbor, not by intention, but unfortunately having the same effect.
She is obsessed with process, and not the actual outcome. The first-term council member once bristled at QSJ’s calling her a “politician.” Some of her fellow council members and other elected officials on MDI privately vent that she is hopelessly unrealistic.
“She desperately wants people to like her, but that’s just not the job,” said one senior official who asked not to be identified because she personally admires Peacock as a person.
Peacock was the chief architect of the council’s only plan to reduce cruise ship visits in 2022. She correctly identified that the problem was after Labor Day and then did an analysis of September and October, the peak months for visitations. She then mocked up her findings on a board at a memorable council workshop last year.
She was at the height of her influence. But then, just as quickly, she declined to hold the industry’s feet to her own plan. Several times, she insisted on “collaboration” with the Cruise Lines International Association instead of taking a more aggressive stance. That turn-around occurred around the same time the president of CLIA threatened to sue Bar Harbor.
That had the effect of holding fellow members Gary Friedmann, Joe Minutolo and Jill Goldthwait in hostage, just as Manchin holds the Democratic Party in hostage.
There is no service in “public service” without actual service. Last time I checked, Bar Harbor is a difficult town to get things done without ample fight. The Town Council is not a debate club. It’s not a nice, feel-good pedagogical milieu.
QSJ asked Peacock for comment, but she did not reply.
FOOTNOTE: The new town manager Kevin Sutherland is said to be reaching out to the industry to begin separate discussion as a last-gap measure at curtailing 2022 passenger traffic.
Sutherland replaced Cornell Knight, who was hired at a time when Bar Harbor council members were actively wooing the cruise ship industry for more business during the shoulder season of September and October. Matt Hochman benefitted greatly as owner of a cafe, the Opera House, he has admitted. Jeff Dobbs is also a remnant of that period.
Sutherland’s mandate is just the opposite of that of Knight - to restore Bar Harbor’s sense of a Maine coastal community before it was overrun by tourism.
Tribute: Patricia Riley Sweeney
1928 - 2022
SOUTHWEST HARBOR - Patricia Riley Sweeney, resident of Southwest Harbor since 1985, died peacefully at Birch Bay Retirement Village on January 17, 2022, one week shy of her 94th birthday. Pat was the only child of John Alan Riley and Mary Elmer Brittin, both Connecticut natives. Pat was born on January 25th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri but spent her early years in Spanish Morocco. Her father, a mining engineer, organized the opening and operation of the Minas del Rif iron ore mine owned by the Spanish royal family. Pat was home schooled, and vacations were spent visiting countries in Europe. Books became her lifelong friends.
Seven years later, (in advance of the Spanish Civil War), the family left Morocco and settled in Westport, Connecticut. Pat attended high school in Westport, where she met future husband Tom Sweeney, and graduated from Middlebury College with a major in languages.
Tom and Pat married in 1950 and settled in New Jersey, but not for long as Tom, a licensed Civil engineer, was asked to go to Brazil and France to manage major international construction projects. Due to her childhood experiences overseas and extensive study of languages, Pat was of great assistance to Tom in navigating foreign countries - all while raising three young children. She always volunteered at the American School libraries and shared her love of reading with her children.
In 1972, Pat and Tom returned to the States to settle in Cleveland, Ohio. Pat earned her master’s degree in Library Science from Case Western Reserve and worked for a database company abstracting information on new products.
Having vacationed in Farmington for many years, Pat and Tom decided to retire to Maine. While looking for a place to settle, they came up to Southwest Harbor for their son’s wedding in 1983. Pat and Tom fell in love with the town and built their retirement home. Tom spent many months rebuilding the Harbor Master’s house, and in 1989 Pat and Tom settled into both the house and the community forming a strong attachment to the Congregational Church and the Public Library.
After Tom’s death in 1993, Pat remained in Southwest Harbor, helping at the library, making friends among a group of widows, continuing to quilt, and knitting mittens and socks for the Maine Seacoast Mission while listening to endless hours of audio books.
Pat is survived by three children: Robin Peabody, Dale Starr Sweeney, and Patrick Skye Sweeney, as well as four grandchildren.
A memorial service at Mt. Height Cemetery, Southwest Harbor will be held later this year. To honor Pat’s love of books, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Southwest Harbor Public Library, P.O. Box 157, Southwest Harbor, ME 04679 or other charity of choice.
Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com