Duo of Petitions in Southwest Harbor Urge Collaboration and Highlight Worries

Hospital Q&A, and Seawall Road public meetings scheduled

Jun 04, 2024

SOUTHWEST HARBOR—Many residents of Mount Desert Island are turning to petitions to try to make sure that their voices are heard.

One petition deals with the closure of a local hospital clinic. The other deals with the continuing closure of the Seawall Road, which sustained major damage during the winter storms.

“This was a brutal … brutal closing with no warning and input,” Susan Buell said about the hospital clinic closing. Her comments came during the Southwest Harbor Select Board meeting last week.

“Sixteen hundred patients, where do they think everyone’s gonna go?” she asked. “It’s created so much anguish.”

Her comments where echoed by many attending.

In early May, Northern Light Health announced that it would close the primary care practice on August 30, intending to fold its operations with another practice in Ellsworth. That continuing practice is located on Resort Way. The Southwest Harbor clinic has nine employees, who will be offered roles in Ellsworth and Blue Hill.

This Wednesday, Mount Desert Island Hospital will host a meeting for a question and answer session about the hospital’s “commitment to expanding access in the region.”

Mount Desert Island Hospital and Northern Light are not the same hospital system.

The Mount Desert Island Hospital forum will be on June 5 at 4 p.m at the Southwest Harbor Public Library.

The clinic takes care of 1,600 patients. Those patients will now have to travel to different locations to receive medical care.

A May 2, 2024 article by the Mount Desert Islander’s Faith Ambrose writes, “Northern Light owns the building in town and will be looking to eventually sell it.”

This was a cause for concern for some members of the Select Board, last Monday,

Many believe that the land was sold for a $1 to have a clinic on the location for the express purpose of a medical clinic and has restrictive coventents in place that limits what it can be used for. Now, the town is researching deeds and contracts that are from the 1960s to determine what it can do.

People attending the Select Board meeting called the situation upsetting and called for accountability from Northern Light, which had said that the closure was due to staffing challenges and the high costs to improve the facility and maintain it.

The clinic began in August 1961. A gift of $50,000 from Eleanor Widener Dixon helped to support four subclinics of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in 1960. Maine Coast Memorial Hospital was folded into the Eastern Maine hospital system out of Bangor in the 2010s and then rebranded to Northern Light Memorial Hospital in 2018.

According to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “Using data from the 2013-2017 Health Reform Monitoring Survey, it was determined that low-income uninsured Mainers, when compared with those insured, have more trouble finding a health care provider to see them, are less likely to seek needed medical services, and have greater difficulty paying their medical bills when they do obtain health care.”

However, “Maine ranks 2nd in the U.S. for the number of primary care physicians practicing in rural counties (99.5 per 100,000). The national average for rural counties is 54.5 per 100,000; and Maine ranks 8th in the U.S. for the number of psychiatrists practicing in rural counties. Maine has 6.2 per 100,000 residents. The U.S. rural average is 3.4.”

SEAWALL ROAD CLOSURE MEETING

Via ANP presentation on Monday. This has been cleaned up since the photo was taken.

The MaineDOT has scheduled a public meeting for the Towns of Tremont and Southwest Harbor, to discuss the Seawall Road closure, for Thursday, June 27 at 6 p.m. in the Harvey Kelley Meeting Room at the Tremont Town Office, 20 Harbor Drive, Bass Harbor.

The Seawall Road links Southwest Harbor to the Bass Harbor Head lighthouse, popular trails (Wonderland and Ship Harbor), and Acadia National Park’s Seawall campground and picnic area. To get to those areas, people have to detour through Tremont, which can take 25 minutes or more.

Charlotte Gill has begun a “Save Seawall” petition, which has gathered approximately 360 signatures in 13 hours. She began the petition June 3.

The petition states that since 1761, Seawall was “one of the most beloved destinations of both locals and visitors from near and far. It is a quintessential part of Mt. Desert Island, as well as the very essence of those who live here. It is not just a thru way, but indeed, a way of life….”

This petition asks for the road to be reopened.

“The issues its closure has caused are abundant. Instead of listing all of them on this forum, this petition simply requests that all, (both residents and visitors), who have interest in seeing this roadway returned to its former status, attach our names to its body, so our voices may be heard,” Gill, who is a local business owner and Southwest Harbor resident, wrote.

“Perhaps, then they can reach the ears of not only the Maine Department of Transportation, as well as Acadia National Park administrators, but also the Army Corp of Engineers, that they then can work in tandem with not only each other, but also all who love it so dearly, that we may once again return to the quiet enjoyment that has existed long before any of us were here,” it continues.

The road was one of many that washed out in the January storms that caused damage throughout Mount Desert Island. In February, the park issued a permit to Maine DOT to rebuild the road. That permit also allowed the road’s footprint to be widened. The road washed out again. It has not been widened or rebuilt. The permit still stands, park officials said last week. At an Acadia National Park Advisory meeting on Monday, Superintendent Kevin Schneider reiterated that same message.

“It provides really important access to our visitors,” Schneider said. It also contains the water, electric and data lines for the campground, which is up and running, and is part of Island Explorer shuttle routes

“We’re open to considering other alternatives,” he said about the road’s reconstruction. Those alternatives include raising the road. “It’s a difficult situation,” he said, and added that it’s also an example of how climate change impacts the island.

“This isn’t something new. I’ve seen storms beat the hell out of it for half a century,” said Carl Brooks. “It’s been the same story.”

It should have been dealt with decades ago, he said.

OTHER SOUTHWEST HARBOR UPDATES:

EMR SOLID WASTE CONTRACT

It was decided that a subgroup of staff and Select Board members would meet with Town Manager Marilyn Lowell to go over feedback and recommendations about the solid wast contract, and then meet with EMR, and have a draft for the packet for the June 11 meeting.

“In general, there’s progress, absolutely,” Selectman James Vallette said, but there are some technical issues that need to be hashed out for clarity. Those potentially included issues concerning guaranteed tonnage and contract length.

PLANNING BOARD APPOINTMENTS

The board decided to ask the town clerk to post open seats for at least a month for the five-year terms on the board.

STORM WATER DRAINAGE ISSUE

In an April 21 letter to Lowell, Anne Napier expressed her concern that the town’s storm water drainage “is causing extensive and on-going damage to my property at 138 Clark Point Road.”

She purchased the property in 1979 and it’s her primary residence.

“At the time of purchase, there was a town storm sewer drain, which was not functioning, located across from my property on the edge of what is now Harbour Cottage Inn property,” she wrote. “So my property was getting a lot of storm water run-off from Clark Point Road and Dirigo Road.”

The sewer pipes and the water pipes were repaired on lower Clark Point Road, and she told the town about the issues, asking them to install parallel storm water piping to handle the runoff.

They did not do so, she said.

She built a second residence on her property in 2006 and 2007. She installed three courses of French drains to mitigate her property’s run-off. She also added a driveway drain. She also tried to create a lip between her driveway and the street to prevent runoff.

“All of these drainage systems worked well to handle my own storm water runoff,” she wrote, “but without the town fully addressing its own storm water responsibilities, it was and still is insufficient to handle the town’s storm water.”

Fast forward a few years, she said, and “public works employees showed up and began excavating under the sidewalk and into my yard to install a new 12” storm sewer drain, which would drain across my property onto neighboring property and then to (the) harbor.”

She wrote that she’d done everything to mitigate damage from the town’s run-off.

She said she’s lost three feet of depth to the yard in one corner, the driveway drains are now exposed and open to damage. Her gardens are damaged each year. Because of the volumes of water, the lawn has eroded underneath the pipe’s outlet. This has created a 12-inch depression. The sewage pipe outflow has eroded the soil from the bank where the fence post footings are.

“I am asking the town to pay for repairs to address current damage to my property and for the town to take further action to permanently prevent future damage,” she wrote. After consulting Acadia Stone and Garden, she believes that the best option would be to extend the 12-inch pipe and drain outlet and bury it, and also replace the soil so that all exposed pipes are covered. That would cost approximately $1,200 for labor and materials.

“It’s a mess,” she told board members.

According to Napier, the town has no right-of-way across her property.

“It doesn’t matter what time of year, I have a creek running through my property,” she said.

Town staff will be visiting her property and coming back with an update.