MOUNT DESERT, Maine — The Mount Desert Select Board Tuesday night officially resolved to get Otter Creek’s working waterfront back.
The signed resolution will also become part of the town’s comprehensive plan, which will help make sure that the mission to restore that working waterfront continues even as staff, administrators and elected officials change.
“That resolution will give you the wherewithal to say this is why we’re asking for these sort of things,” Town Manager Durlin Lunt said. “What we’re trying to do is make something tie together as to what needs to be done over in that village and why.”
Lunt said that he’d try to schedule a meeting with Acadia National Park’s superintendent this month and also talk about the resolution to the Acadia Advisory Commission and try to achieve some of the resolution’s goals.
Because Otter Creek is surrounded by land that’s part of Acadia National Park some of the resolution’s goals might need an act of Congress.
“We’re hoping this will be a good first start along those lines,” Lunt said.
The resolution spells out the town’s goals and the problem of the causeway
The resolution explains that tidal flushing is important to Otter Creek’s inner harbor and that “access to the inner harbor has been severely diminished by the installation of a causeway.”
That causeway lessens access to Otter Creek’s inner harbor by fishing vessels and others. It also diminishes exit from the inner harbor’s small boat launch area out to the bay.
It’s the only way boats have to get to Otter Creek and its cove. Because of how the causeway is built, however, only very small boats can move from the landing to the bigger cove and ocean. This has not always been the case.
The resolution also mentions that the boat ramp and launch area need to be re-established and made more usable via a land acquisition from Acadia National Park and the Department of Interior, which owns the surrounding lands.
The landing in Otter Creek rests at the end of a steep, narrow gravel road and has been used by Otter Creek residents who have accessed it for at least 127 years.
Finally, the road to the landing is narrow. It’s almost impossible for most people to turn their vehicles around. That’s especially true if that vehicle is hauling a boat.
Other goals include clearing the vista so that people can see the harbor again as well as making the inner harbor more secure, restoring the traditional trails that were there before Rockefeller acquired the land, and determining the ownership of Quarry Road.
The resolution says that the restoration of those traditional trails in the village “is the key to healthy tourism in Otter Creek.”
Working with each other and not against each other
A key element to Lunt’s quest is to move toward the working waterfront’s restoration with kindness, via the golden rule, which is basically a moral principle that underlies many cultures and world religions that states that you should treat people the way you want them to treat you.
“What I mean by the golden rule is not that he or she who has the gold rules, but treating each other with respect,” Lunt said earlier this summer. “Local and federal officials [should] work together, not against one another but for the common goal of public service.”
Still, he also wants the federal government to recognize the loss of Otter Creek’s working waterfront and that it was what he defined as a devastating blow to the village from which it has never recovered.
The problem is that the land, once owned by John D. Rockefeller, surrounding the boat landing is owned and controlled by Acadia National Park. Rockefeller gave it to the park in his will.
Federal legislation defines the park’s boundaries and doesn’t allow the park to give land away, officials have stressed. When it does happen, it usually happens as a land trade.
Otter Creek and the town of Mount Desert would rather not lose more of its land.
“It really shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars in surveys and other miscellaneous expenses and take months to acquire a piece of unused land which is just over half the size on an NBA court or the infield on a baseball diamond,” Lunt has said. “I think momentum can be gained.”
This story was originally published by The Bar Harbor Story. To receive regular coverage from the Bar Harbor Story, sign up for a free subscription here.
