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Crunch Time at Sebago Lake Boat Launch

April 07, 2009 - STANDISH — A popular boat launch at the southern end of Sebago Lake is undergoing a hasty makeover to replace parking areas that have been blocked as part of a long-running dispute between Standish and the Portland Water District.

Workers cut trees next to a town-owned access road Tuesday to make room for new parking spaces along both sides of the entrance from Route 35. The town is beginning the project just days after the water district placed a row of boulders near the edge of the lake to block off the last large unpaved parking area, which it considered a threat to lake water quality near its drinking water intake pipes.

"In order to have any parking for this season, we've got to go ahead," Town Manager Gordon Billington said Tuesday.

Town officials hope to have the new parking areas ready for Memorial Day weekend. Even if they succeed, however, the boaters who flock to the launch this year will find a much more limited supply of spots.

More than 100 vehicles with boat trailers have been known to park at the launch on weekends and holidays, but the town's right of way will only accommodate 39 vehicles with trailers and 22 other vehicles.

"It's going to be very crowded," Billington said.

He said the project is now on a fast track because of the new barrier cutting off the traditional parking area. The town will issue a request for bids on the project this weekend and hopes to hire a contractor in two weeks, he said.

Town councilors had already allocated $105,000 toward a parking area, but the total cost could be higher and won't be known until the bids are opened.

The new barrier blocking the parking area should not have come as a surprise, according to water district officials.

The district has been reclaiming the parking areas, and in some cases planting vegetation, on both sides of the town's launch for several years. Its board of trustees voted last September to install the newest barrier after the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the town owned the 99-foot-wide right of way to the lake, but had no right to use the surrounding district land for parking.

"It's been our intention to get that taken care of for years," said Bill Lunt, vice president of the water district's board of trustees. The steady expansion of the parking areas threatened water quality, both through intensive use of the launch and through erosion and storm runoff from the parking areas, he said.

"Basically, we're trying to return it back to natural, so the stormwater will go through it into the ground rather than run into the lake," Lunt said.

He said the water district would not block off one remaining area that is used as a turnaround for vehicles, at least until after this boating season. That will give the town more time to install a new traffic flow within its right-of-way, he said.

The boat launch has been the source of tension between Standish and the water district for more than a decade. Along with multiple court cases, residents have twice rejected referendum proposals to move the launch.

The dispute also has broader impacts.

The district draws drinking water from the southern end of the lake for nearly 200,000 people in Greater Portland. The boat launch, meanwhile, is the only public boating access on the southern end of Maine's second-largest lake, and most of the people who use it come from other communities in southern Maine.

The only state-owned boat launches on the lake are on the northern end, at Sebago Lake State Park and at a small public ramp in Raymond, said George Powell, director of the state Department of Conservation's Boating Facilities Division.

The state now plans to expand parking at the state park, in part because boaters crowded out of Standish will likely drive about 45 minutes north to use the park's boat launch. Powell said he expects a lot of competition to get into the Standish launch this summer, and potentially some traffic problems for the town.

"That site has seen as many as 100 vehicles parked on it, so I don't see this as meeting the need, and the need is only going to grow," he said. "They'll be trying to park wherever they can find a place."

Standish has staff at the boat launch on busy days, issuing passes and supervising parking.

Powell said he hopes Standish's new parking area is just a temporary solution and that the town and water district can revive discussions about an alternative launch site. "We're still dancing around trying to come up with a way that meets everybody's concerns," he said.

Officials with the town and water district said relations have improved recently, in part because they have not been talking about any new boat launches.

"It's very unfortunate that things couldn't have been worked out to everyone's benefit," said Lunt, the water district trustee. "We've decided now to leave the boat launch issue up to the state and Standish."

By JOHN RICHARDSON Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, April 1, 2009


Lakes: Sebago Lake
Regions: Sebago


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