Harbor Committee Recommends Small Cruise Ship Tendering to Town Pier
Group recommend changes to mooring ordinance, work on dock data
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BAR HARBOR—The Bar Harbor Harbor Committee recommended, Monday night, that the Bar Harbor Town Council continue to explore allowing American Cruise Lines to tender to the town-owned Ells Pier.
The small cruise ships are American-flagged and would not require security updates for the site. There is an older security plan that would have to be redone in order to allow foreign-flagged ships to tender to the pier. That would cause a larger amount of work for town officials and a larger footprint of use on the pier, Harbormaster Chris Wharff told committee members, but it could be done.
“My plan would be to tender to the most inboard float to where the float ramp is,” he said of the current potential plan. He’d like to see a new gangway that would be long enough and wide enough for ADA compliance and cameras to count people to make sure that the town doesn’t disembark more than 1,000 passengers, which is against the ordinance.
The company’s tenders tend to carry 30 passengers at a time.
“The pier would look the same as it is,” Wharff said of the use. He added that he doesn’t think it would change the face of how the pier functions and looks.
Busses would park up where the bike rack is. Each ship runs two excursions a day.
Wharff said he didn’t see the tendering as impacting the rentals too much. If they allowed foreign flagged ships in the space, as suggested by member Andrew Keblinksy, there would have to be security changes, which could change the footprint. Along with retrofitting the older security plan, there would have to be training, stanchion separation, and signage.
There is more potential for bottlenecks at the larger scale ships, but they wouldn’t necessarily happen, Wharff said. No boutique foreign-flagged vessels have expressed an interest in partnering with the town.
“This is a very simple first step for us to try this out and see how it works,” Wharff said. A potential next step could be allowing foreign-flagged ships to tender.
Member Jonathan Carter worried about the town potentially interfering with a facility that currently tenders.
“Right now there is no facility that’s permitted according to Chapter 52 to accept passengers,” Wharff said.
The Golden Anchor property on West Street, which had been used to tender cruise ship passengers, was issued a notice of violation by the town’s code enforcement officer for disembarking passengers without a permit. That permit is now required under the new ordinance, approved by voters in November 2022. The company is fighting that decision and has been legally disembarking passengers prior to the change.
The Golden Anchor failed in appealing the violation at the town’s appeals board earlier this month. The matter is now before the Maine Business and Consumer Court.
“They have a lot of interest long-term in developing the ferry terminal with us,” Wharff said of American Cruise Lines. That property is currently used partially by Bay Ferries for its CAT ferry service to Nova Scotia. The other portion of the property is slated for eventual development into a marina.
Southwest Harbor Harbormaster Rob Leavitt said during public comment that he had worked with American Cruise Lines while serving as a harbormaster in Boothbay Harbor.
“They were good partners to work with, responsive,” Leavitt said.
“I would echo that,” Wharff said. “We’ve worked with them for years. I’m on a first-name basis with all of their planners.”
“The town collects passenger service fees and port development fees,” Carol Chappell speaking from the public said. That money has to be tied to the vessels, but tendering money is not encumbered that way. “That’s just something I’d like to let people know.”
Harbor committee member Pancho Cole urged a vote on just the proposal and for it to not to include the foreign-flagged vessels. Keblinsky opposed. Larry Nuesslein III works with a tendering company and abstained.
MOORING ORDINANCE CHANGES
The committee also approved draft ordinance language for a change in how the town deals with moorings. Those changes would be within Chapter 153 of the town’s land use ordinance, entitled “Port and Harbor.”
Wharff updated the potential changes according to feedback that occurred in the first meeting. The next step would be to get it on the town council’s agenda so that it can go to public hearing.
The changes are about what the town can do when moorings in the inner harbor are “substantially unused” for more than one season. Moorings are assigned indefinitely to users who pay an annual fee. Many moorings are registered but unused year after year. There is a waiting list for the moorings and only a limited number exist.
The change, if approved, would allow the town’s harbormaster to reassign an unused or abandoned mooring to the next applicant in chronological order of the applications.
“Seems fair,” Nuesslein said.
Chair Micala Delepierre, asked if Wharff had talked to any additional fisherman. Wharff said he hadn’t, but it has been noticed for multiple meetings.
“I don’t see any problem with a motion to adopt,” Delepierre said.
It was approved unanimously.
KING TIDES DATA AND DOCK LENGTHS
Vice Chair Kaitlyn Mullen continued her work, looking ahead to try to determine if King Tides and sea changes would impact people in Bar Harbor who have docks. She’s trying to look ahead and find the depth range for those existing users. To do so, she reached out to people with docks.
Skip Strong suggested using under keel clearance as a standard. That standard would be one foot alongside the dock at all conditions while sitting, two feet when approaching the dock.
Unsurprisingly, she said, most people who responded were not in the inner harbor. She talked to eight entities of 80 different vessels of various sizes.
Most were recreational vessels and had a bit of a different requirement than the larger vessels.
Needs varied from 3.5 feet to 11 feet depending on how the vessels are built and sizes. Mullen said that she’s going to reach out to the University of Maine to look at data about the number of king tide hours. The hope is to look at forecasting models and thirty-year numbers and determine that need.
The town’s 2019 limits stipulate that you can’t extend a dock out more than 300 feet from the high tide line.
“What we’re starting to run into is that’s not enough,” Mullen said.
The inner harbor would have to be dredged potentially to stay viable, Carter said. “Everything costs so damn much now, I don’t know how we can do that.”
Dredging is permitted via the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Environmental Protection, Wharff said. “It’s a big process.”
“Push is going to come to shove at some point,” member Bob Garland said.
Potential changes to the length of docks would have to be changed in land use. Wharff said he’d approach code enforcement to talk about it.
“I think the point of us doing this is that we can have good information to make a helpful recommendation,” Delepierre said.
OTHER BUSINESS
Delepierre met with the Maine Coast Fisherman’s Association about creating an inventory of the working waterfront. The committee could potentially work with the organization, which is already working with Southwest Harbor. She’d like to reach out to SWH. She’ll also reach out to Healthy Acadia and the Bar Harbor Marine Resources Committee.
“We’re so separated, but we’re ultimately so connected,” Delepierre said of the towns.
Wharff said he feels like the inventory should be for the whole island.
“So many people are using the whole island for a living,” Wharff said.
The Bar Harbor fleet might go to Southwest Harbor for the winter and others shift with seasons and needs.
Delepierre said building stronger island-wide relationships would be beneficial. “I think those relationships are our strongest tool here…. I would love for us to have more formal conversations like that.”
Nuesslein suggested creating a memorandum of understanding. Carter suggested including the town of Gouldsboro in those. And Blue Hill, Delepierre said.
Maine Sea Grant has been having an extensive conversation series up and down the coast about last year’s storms’ impacts on the working waterfront, January 27, from 5-7, at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor.
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Made in the USA… a great direction per the Harbor Committee’s vote to allow small American flagged cruise ships to tendering to the Town Pier. Carroll Chappell and Rob Leavitt brought useful information about the fees this would bring to the Town, and that American Cruise Lines are a reliable company with whom to do business. Thank you.