The Saga of Seawall Road Continues
Southwest Harbor looks for help
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.
SOUTHWEST HARBOR— “We need to have a larger voice on this issue,” Southwest Harbor Town Manager Karen Reddersen said to the Southwest Harbor Select Board Tuesday, January 28. “We want there to be a voice.”
The select board members agreed that when it comes to dealing with the State of Maine and the town’s beloved Seawall Road, they don’t want their issues and concerns to be lost in the shuffle of news cycles and politics.
So, Reddersen has been reaching out to state legislators, to senators, to other towns, to representatives to Congress, looking for advice, looking for help, hoping that many voices joining together might make Southwest Harbor’s population of approximately 1,750 a bit louder.
It’s all about the Seawall Road.
A series of winter storms in 2024 destroyed the Seawall Road in Southwest Harbor. It’s a state-owned road that joins Southwest Harbor to Tremont and leads to Acadia National Park’s Seawall Campground, Ship Harbor Trail, and Wonderland Trail. It also is a major route to the Bass Harbor Lighthouse.
This summer, after months of closure, the state agreed to let local businesses voluntarily do a temporary fix to get the road—beloved by MDI residents and tourists—back in working order.
Now, the Maine Department of Transportation has told the Town of Southwest Harbor and Acadia National Park that the state’s permanent and full repair to 1,000 feet of the Seawall Road will not occur this spring, as previously said, but is being postponed until fall 2025.
“It’s concerning and my recommendation is that we put it on an upcoming agenda,” Reddersen told the Southwest Harbor Select Board, January 14.
They did, but in the meantime, Reddersen has been reaching out to government representatives and neighboring towns.
The heightened worries came after a January 7 letter from MaineDOT Deputy Commissioner Dale Doughty to Reddersen and Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider. In it, Doughty explains that the postponement of permanent repairs to the road is due to the town, park, and state being unable to reach an agreement about future repair costs by early 2025.
Future repairs are expected because of the road’s vulnerability to sea-level rise and predicted more intense storms. It is not considered a primary road with urgent needs by the DOT.
“As outlined in both July and October 2024 letters from MaineDOT to the Town of Southwest Harbor, the department intends to provide a full repair to Seawall Road in 2025, the first step is the execution of a cost-sharing agreement for future repairs,” Doughty wrote.
However, Vice Chair Natasha Johnson said that the July memo to the town did not specify that there would be financial expectations of the town and Acadia National Park.
As proposed, that share would see Acadia National Park and Southwest Harbor each paying 33% of the costs for future repairs and MaineDOT would pay for 34%.
But the national park’s finances are part of five-year plans and it can’t easily commit to that agreement. There are challenges with the park being on a five-year plan and as a federal entity it couldn’t quickly obligate funds.
Southwest Harbor worries that without a commitment, the state might abandon the road, but also worries about its taxpayers having to shoulder a potential one-third cost on a road that hasn’t been budgeted for and isn’t owned by them, but by the state.
Johnson said she appreciated Reddersen pulling together all the communication from the DOT. She referenced the July 12 letter, second page on the top “including financial support,” and stressed that this letter was an internal communication from Doughty to the commissioner. In the letter to Southwest Harbor, it doesn’t mention any financial obligations, she said. Instead, it mentioned support.
“It could be so many different aspects of the project,” Johnson said.
She also said the numbers for traffic flow taken by the state and used to solidify its stance that Seawall isn’t a higher class of road weren’t good representations of traffic on that road.
They also discussed traffic counts from the state, which were taken, they said, during the time that the road was closed, construction was occurring and people already knew to reroute to get to the areas in Acadia and in Tremont that might normally be accessed via Seawall Road.
The board spoke to potentially measuring the traffic in August itself. Reddersen has also forwarded the packet of correspondence to the Acadia National Park Commission and it is an agenda item for its February meeting.
The select board has also requested that instead of being the lowest classification of roads, Seawall or Route 102A, could just be part of Route 102.
“The designation doesn’t seem correct,” Select Board Chair Carolyn Ball said.
LEAGUE OF TOWNS
Earlier in the day, at a League of Towns meeting in Ellsworth, Reddersen spoke to those gathered about the issues of the Seawall Road in Southwest Harbor.
“Repairs were scheduled to be this May,” Reddersen said reminded the group of town managers and administrators from towns in the region.
She asked for the League to give support to the town. There are safety and security concerns about the ambulance service to Tremont, she said.
“We’re a little fish and I feel it impacts the entire island,” she said.
“What would happen if that road washed out again?” Mount Desert Town Manager Durlin Lunt asked.
Then it would be the second season in which the area might be closed.
“There is some sense from our meetings that they have a sense of abandoning that road,” Reddersen said of the state.
That, she said, wouldn’t do the park, the town, or the island any favors.
“MaineDOT didn’t necessarily appreciate that historic value,” Reddersen said and she wondered if it would start a precedent for towns cost-sharing for state infrastructure.
Lunt worried about the implications for state roads in other Mount Desert towns that have washed out in storms and are vulnerable to storm surges and high tides. He asked if the Seawall Road will need repairs before summer season.
Right now, it seems like it will hold up, but the repairs were considered temporary in nature because of what MaineDOT agreed to do, Redderson said.
“For decades DOT has been all about cost sharing or cost avoiding,” Lamoine’s administrative assistant to the select board Stu Marckoon said. “This seems to be a continuation of that.”
The road, Reddersen stressed, is critically important to the tourism industry on the island.
“As you look at the flow of the island, if you’re going to the Bass Island Lighthouse, you’re going through Seawall,” she said.
“We talked about the need for one voice across the island,” Reddersen told select board members.
At the Tremont Select Board meeting, January 21, Town Manager Jesse Dunbar told the board that he’d relayed to Reddersen that financial participation would “likely be a stretch” but that he would inquire about both possibilities with the select board. At that meeting the Tremont Select Board had little discussion on the issue and directed Dunbar to not participate or spend any time on the project.
In Southwest Harbor, Tuesday, Johnson asked if the town could step around Doughty and speak directly with the commissioner and wondered if the town should look to legal counsel to read between the lines and help the town accomplish what it needs.
“Like many residents of Southwest Harbor and Tremont, I have been frustrated by the ongoing closure of Seawall Road and the uncertainty about its future,” said Senator Nicole Grohoski in a press release July 16, 2024. “I am grateful that MDOT has listened to community members and announced a path forward for both short- and long-term repairs. Repairing Seawall Road will reconnect important public and private sector partners and increase public health and safety. I will continue to work with town leaders and state agencies to facilitate a short-term repair as quickly as possible.”
This is the first of two stories about the select board meeting.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
To read the board's packet and DOT materials
July 15 Doughty letter to town
To access minutes and recordings of the meetings
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Gov Mills wants to spend Billions in the next budget with new programs/old programs. Anything and everything except do what is right and repair a state-owned road which is critical for emergency vehicle's to respond instead of making them go around another way increasing response times by 30 minutes or more. Maybe rename the road to Gov Mills Death Road. Remember when seconds are critical, 30 min or any minutes lost due to an increase means loss of home in a fire Death because of Heart Attack or Stroke or other illness or accident.
EXPLAIN YOURSELF Gov Mills