As winter sports enthusiasts’ plans heat up for a great season of ice fishing and snowmobiling on Sebago Lake, relations between Standish and the Portland Water District may be reaching yet another boiling point due to recent developments surrounding the boat launch.
The district’s latest official communication with the town, in the form of a cease and desist order, prevents Standish from maintaining the boat launch parking lot and has once again fanned the flames of suspicion and anger between the two entities.
Those familiar with the situation and the past history of the tensions between the two entities, are surprised by the latest developments.
“The PWD dealt with the boat launch thing – they just kind of slammed Standish. I don’t think this helps matters any,” State Sen. Bill Diamond said. “I was disappointed with the PWD – it could have been handled better. They rubbed salt in the wound and the wound has been there for a long time.”
Standish Town Attorney Kenneth Cole says the cease and desist order, which the district said was issued in response to Standish public works crews grading the boat launch parking lot, was “inflammatory and unnecessary” because “the town was doing nothing different” from what they’d been doing for many years.
Although the district is currently plowing the lot so that it will be ready for winter events – including the Windham Rotary’s ice fishing derby which is expected to draw thousands to the lake in late February – the district has plans to convert the parking area into a system of culverts and wetlands to deal with stormwater run-off from Sebago Lake Village.
Buoyed by a Cumberland County Superior Court ruling last month, the district maintains it owns the land that is adjacent to Standish’s boat launch. But Standish has filed an appeal to the Maine Supreme Court challenging that decision and has requested the court look at the town’s long history of maintaining and using the property. The town hopes the higher court will overturn the ruling, therefore giving it prescriptive rights (squatters’ rights in layman’s terms) to the land.
Replacement ramp?
But, behind the scenes, Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife is working with the district to find an alternate site, according to the department’s Director of Public Access George Powell.
“We’re trying to work with the PWD to identify potential boat access sites to take the place of the Standish access,” he said. “Our goal is to have a new facility in service in 2008 when our agreement with the town of Standish expires.”
Although both Powell and Public Relations Manager Michelle Clements say the department has been involved with the district for a number of years, this past week Powell was observed buying copies of Standish’s land-use ordinances from the town office.
According to Powell, the department is once again considering Rogers Farm, Sheesley Abbott (both on the eastern side of the lake) and the Cargill lot (on the western side) for a 120-vehicle parking lot and boat launch area.
But Cole says: “They’ve got to deal with the town if they want an acceptable proposal to go through.” And Standish residents twice before voted down the Rogers Farm site, he said.
A new boat ramp, downstream from the intake pipes located in the middle of Lower Bay, would offer relief to the circulation pattern, which district officials maintain circulates counterclockwise through the Lower Bay. Relocating the boat ramp up the eastern side of the lake would prevent water from the boat launch area, contaminated with village run-off and gasoline from boats, from reaching the district’s intake pipes that are located deep in the Lower Bay.
“It’s not our intention to seek closure of the Standish boat ramp,” Powell said. “If we develop a new site, the town will still be able to use their site, and it will be up to them to work it out with the PWD.”
But the district has refused the most recent effort by the town “to work it out.” During the last week of November, after the lower court’s ruling that the district owns the parking lot, Standish Town Manager Gordon Billington contacted the district’s manager, Ronald Miller, about the possibility of renewing discussion of a plan proposed in 2001 by the district.
The 2001 Duke Engineering Services design, paid for by the district, would provide 50 to 60 parking spaces for boat trailers and for overflow to be established on the town-owned 99-foot right of way (Northeast Road Extension) at the district’s expense.
In an email to Billington, Miller said he presented to the district’s trustees the offer to renew discussion on implementing this design.
“There was no support whatsoever for PWD constructing the parking facilities conceptualized in the plan you cite,” Miller replied to Billington in a Nov. 29 e-mail.
Billington found the response surprising.
“It was interesting,” he said, “because the trustees led me to believe they would be interested in a settlement.”
But, according to Clements, the district’s plans have changed.
“We did offer the (parking plan) to them and they did not want that at that time, so it went off the table,” she said. “The PWD renewed their vision and defined what it wanted to do – they’ve had a change in direction and they don’t want to fund the parking lot.”
Clements added that the decision did not mean the district wasn’t willing to work with the town.
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