Seawall Road Likely Not Opening This Summer
New DOT project in Bass Harbor adding to road woes
SOUTHWEST HARBOR AND TREMONT—Unless Maine Department of Transportation plans change, the Seawall Road will not be open this summer.
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.
The news announced by Southwest Harbor Town Manager Marilyn Lowell and Tremont Town Manager Jesse Dunbar during a Tuesday morning League of Towns’ meeting, comes two days before a DOT-led public meeting on Thursday. The DOT meeting notice reads that it is “to discuss options for addressing the impacts of storm damage to Seawall Road/State Route 102A.”
“Marilyn and I and plenty of people have been frustrated with the DOT,” Dunbar said Tuesday morning. “They have no plan to open it for the summer. Maybe that will change after the meeting. So, we’ll see.”
Local contractors have expressed that they could fix the road so that it could be used this summer.
“It’s the opinion that a temporary fix could be done in two days to make it operational,” Dunbar said.
There is currently a detour through the area to get to other parts of Tremont that are more quickly accessible using the Seawall Road.
Compounding the issue, Dunbar said, is that the DOT just started a project in the middle of the existing detour.
Tremont Emergency Management Director and Fire Chief Keith Higgins said later Tuesday, “On top of the Seawall closure, the state decided to still move forward with the shore stabilization plan in Bass Harbor. This reduces the travel lanes to one lane. This feels like one more nail in the coffin for those traveling that route daily including the traffic to and from the state ferry terminal.”
The new work is before the turn to the Swan’s Island Ferry. Both Higgins and Dunbar worried that it could impact people catching the ferry.
Dunbar said that he urged the DOT to postpone that project until the Seawall Road is open. However, the project started today, June 25. The DOT has said it will be done by the middle of August.
Lowell said that they have asked the DOT what is going to happen if someone doesn’t survive an emergency because the towns’ joint volunteer ambulance service, which is housed in Southwest Harbor and responds to the far side of Tremont, takes 30 minutes to get to a call.
“It’s a public safety matter,” Mount Desert Town Manager Durlin Lunt agreed and said that should be stressed as often as possible to DOT representatives.
The state has procedures and traffic counts in areas that help them prioritize projects.
The community down here graciously hosts 4 million visits for the state, Dunbar said, referencing the tourist revenue and visits to Acadia National Park. Then the state takes the money generated via sales tax, but the state, he said, needs to help support the island, its infrastructure, and its communities, as well.
One business owner, Charlotte Gill, has begun a “Save Seawall” petition, which has gathered approximately 923 signatures since the petition began June 3. This petition asks for the road to be reopened.
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.”
MEETING DETAILS:
The DOT meeting is open to the public and is on Thursday, June 27, at the Pemetic School, which is located at 327 Main Street in Southwest Harbor. The meeting is scheduled from 6 to 7:30 P.M.
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Granted that the failure of Seawall Road does not have the region-wide impacts of the collapse of I-95 in Philadelphia or the ship strike on the Francis Scott Key Bridge and closure of the Port of Baltimore, but locally its impact cannot be overstated. So this is a time for our representatives in the state legislature and the governor to show the same leadership and out-of-the box thinking that Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro and Wes Moore did and get MDOT to open the road ASAP with a temporary fix. The MDOT bureaucracy needs a sharp wake up call!
I have a sense of humor but it usually fails me when it comes to bureaucratic stupidity. My dad owned an engineering company and we did engineering layout for roads all the time. Any decent contractor could make that section of road useable in nothing flat for far, far, less than some idiotic study of the "feasibility of temporary repairs." I don't know the current state of the rocks thrown up by the storm but if they are still in place they could be spread out and they'd probably make a good base for a new temporary roadbed.