Endangered Bats Could Make Developing Homes in Town Hill Difficult
Brigadoon Subdivision Heads to Public Hearing in March, Cough Resigns from Planning Board, Board Delves into Purpose of a Public Hearing
BAR HARBOR—There’s a new player causing worries about the development of housing in Bar Harbor. It’s not NIMBY-ism. And while water tables and nitrates are often a worry, that’s not a brand new concern. The newest player that could cause issues building homes in the Town Hill area is a nocturnal creature with long ears and a desire to fly through the lower parts of forest canopies as it feasts on prey.
According to landscape architect Perry Moore, the northern long-eared bats are on Mount Desert Island. The small bats were reclassified as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. There are federal rules that keep wetland alterations from happening within a three-mile radius of their location, he said. Those rules could impact development of housing sites in Bar Harbor if those sites have wetlands on them.
The bats have been historically located within three miles of an approximately 180-acre lot (“Brigadoon”) off the Crooked Road that was originally conceived as being divided into 14 housing lots and currently, partially because of the bats, that proposal has been shrunk to five 5-acre lots.
The bats could impact the project’s goal to bring homes to the Town Hill property, which has multiple wet areas and creeks, Moore learned when he contacted the Army Corps of Engineers for a permit.
“This is kind of the type of the iceberg. You guys are going to hear about this more,” Moore told the Bar Harbor Planning Board members during the Bar Harbor Planning Board review for completeness for the application for the subdivision, January 31.
For wetland alteration, a project has to go through the Army Corps of Engineers to be approved. Wetland alteration, Moore said, includes not cutting trees of more than three inches in diameter. That, he said, is almost all the trees in the area.
“That might seem like a dry observation right now,” Moore said, “but if you think about how this affects all the projects in that area. Three miles is a long ways and the standards are any wetland alteration—any wetland alteration requires a permit from the Corps.”
According to the final rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reclassify the bats, “Just four years after the discovery of the disease, for example, the northern long-eared bat experienced a 98% decline in winter counts across 42 sites in Vermont, New York and Pennsylvania. Similarly, the arrival of white-nose syndrome led to a 10–fold decrease in northern long-eared bat colony size.”
It’s more than the northern long-eared bats though. Moore said while doing their due diligence, they noticed tri-color bats were on the land. He believes those bats will soon also be registered endangered on the federal level. When a species is registered as endangered, it means that they are at immediate risk of extinction or partial extinction in their range.
According to the 2023 State of the Bats Report, “Millions of bats have perished from white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease of hibernating bats first discovered in New York in 2007. The fungus has spread across the United States and Canada, killing 9 out of 10 little brown bats, northern long-eared bats, and tricolored bats.”
The syndrome was first discovered in Maine in 2011.
“This month we’re going to have intensive bat work done on the property,” Moore told the board. He expects the tri-color bats; hibernacula are in the back of the property. This would cause more setback needs. So, they are not doing any wetland alterations.
They’ve moved the location of the subdivision’s proposed road to directly across from Fern Meadow, which adds approximately $100,000 to the project.
Bats are considered ecologically important. They eat insects, help pollinate plants, and spread seeds. This helps both farmland and forests thrive. The northern long-eared bats have been devastated because of white nose syndrome, a fungus that typically attacks during hibernation and makes the bat’s nose and wings seem fuzzy. The syndrome devastated the bat population in Acadia and other places in 2011 and 2012. Both the tri-colored bats and northern long-eared bats were impacted. Bats are mostly active in May through mid-October. They can hibernate in caves, rock crevices, talus slopes, and buildings.
Because of the bats and other considerations, the subdivision plan has been currently scaled back from its initial 14-lot sketch plan to five five-acre lots with several contingencies on when some of those lots can be built if the plan is approved. The property is 179.21 acres. The property is being developed by Denise Carey Bettencourt and Christopher Bettencourt.
During the completeness review, several abutters spoke to concerns about the changes in the plan, that it mentions phases. They had worries about the road’s placement, the amount of blasting, ground water, and if the plan would be scaled up.
Planning Board Chair Millard Dority listened to those concerns, but since it was a completeness review, he said that those comments are really meant for public hearing, which is scheduled for March 6. He encouraged people to attend. A completeness review, both he and Planning Director Michele Gagnon stressed, is meant to see if the application materials are complete. The board unanimously agreed that it wasn’t.
“Our job tonight is not to have a deliberation here. We’re merely saying are there things missing in this document to make a decision,” Dority said.
Before discussion began, Secretary Elissa Chesler recused herself (with no vote because Dority said it was not brought as a question) and stepped down and away from the discussion because, she said, three of the project’s abutters are coworkers and one of those people work in her boss’s office directly. She lives in the Frenchman Hill subdivision, she said. She felt it was inappropriate for her to discuss and vote on the application. She did not participate in this meeting’s discussion.
The project had a sketch plan review on October 6 and a site visit and neighborhood meeting on November 2.
Early in the meeting, Moore implied that the presence of endangered bats and wetlands throughout Town Hill could have implications on potential building in the area. Bar Harbor’s population has increased from 4,820 in 2000 to 5,527 in 2020. It’s projected that by 2038, it will have more than 6,000 residents, an increase of 15%. It’s estimated that Bar Harbor needs over 600 housing units by 2033.
RESIGNATION
Planning Board member Joe Cough resigned from the seven-member Planning Board due to issues with his health. Cough’s term would have expired in 2026. Planning Board members are appointed to the board by the Town Council.
PLANNING BOARD MEETING TIME
The board members briefly discussed changing the 4 p.m. starting time for meetings. Chesler worried that it makes it hard for working members and some of the public to attend the meetings. They all agreed to discuss changing the time in the future. However, Dority said that there is a lot of people in the audience now compared to the past when meetings were at 7 or 7:30 p.m. This time also works better for the Planning Staff and the employee who records the meetings.
“You don’t like those days we left at two o’clock in the morning?” Dority joked to staff.
Dority said the easiest time to change is when the fiscal year and composition of the board changes, which is in June.
PURPOSE OF A PUBLIC HEARING
Prior to the January meeting, Dority, Vice Chair Ruth Eveland, Gagnon, and town attorney Stephen Wagner spoke about the purpose of a public hearing, specifically if proposed land use amendments can or cannot be changed by the Planning Board after that meeting occurs and before the proposed amendment language is moved to the Bar Harbor Town Council. It’s a question, Dority said, the board has been asking for twenty years.
The town attorneys have given them an answer.
The board does have the right to make amendments to the amendment that they are moving forward after a public hearing and they do not have to hold another public hearing before moving it to the Town Council, Dority said.
The attorneys, Gagnon said, are preparing a flow-chart memo for the six-month process of how the land use amendment process works. This includes how and when amendments can be changed prior to town voters deciding the amendment’s fate.
Chesler said that a lot of the pressure comes from having the public hearing at the very last Planning Board meeting, which can make it feel like the board members’ decisions are against the wall and it makes it expensive to respond.
Eveland said that it’s important to make sure that the public is engaged earlier in the process so that people know they can talk about proposed amendments and give input prior to the letter for the formal public hearing.
LODGING DEFINITIONS WORKSHOP
Directly after the meeting the board held a lodging definitions workshop to go through potential changes to how the land use ordinance defines types of lodging. This was not televised on Town Hall Streams and the process is ongoing. These changes are not on the upcoming June warrant and if the process continues, they will be voted on in the future, potentially November 2024.
LISTENING SESSION TONIGHT
The upcoming potential changes for the town’s land use ordinance will be discussed, February 1 at 6 p.m.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/bats-in-acadia-facing-challenges-but-hanging-on.htm
Sketch plan application (Submitted 09.07.2023 and revised on 09.25.2023)
Site plan application (Submitted 01.09.2024)
Site plan application (revised on 01.23.24)
https://barharborstory.substack.com/p/new-proposed-development-hopes-to
https://www.barharbormaine.gov/282/Planning-Board
Hi Carrie Jones, I live on Frenchmans Hill West, abutting several of the abutters of the Brigadoon proposed project. In March 2012 I took photos of a bat on a utility pole near to the little brook that crosses under Frenchmans Hill West and runs into the the Frenchmans Hill Fire Pond. I've entered the observation in iNaturalist so anyone can take a look. iNaturalist AI suggested that this might be in the "Evening Bat" Family, but it's not a good photo. An expert might be able to tell.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198147128