HARPSWELL

After a nine-year run, there will be no Harpswell Festival this year.

The Harpswell Festival Committee announced online recently that the festival will no longer take place, and that the festival committee “is sorry to disappoint all the wonderful folks who supported the event through the years — visitors, donors and volunteers.”

The festival, held at Mitchell Field, has included fair food, a parade, displays, a touch tank by Fishing Families of Harpswell, lots of crafters, live music and fireworks, Allen said. The event drew as many as 4,500 people and well over 2,000 even in bad weather.

The halt came about because over the years, the Harpswell Festival Committee has suffered attrition in some key positions, “and we didn’t have new people stepping up to fill those positions, and it was getting to the point where it was asking the same people to do it again and again,” Harpswell Festival Executive Director Tom Allen said.

“When we began,” Allen said, “we probably had 30 people working on this project. That was part of the fun.” But over the years the committee dwindled to 12 and then to eight people last year who were doing everything as volunteers.

“And it wasn’t even so much that we were complaining about being overworked, it just wan’t as much fun,” Allen said.

The first festival was held the summer of 2004 after two energy companies proposed building a liquefied-natural-gas terminal at George J. Mitchell Field, the site of a former U.S. Navy fuel depot. Residents voted March 9, 2004 against leasing the property to the companies.

Following the divisive issue, Allen said a group of people emerged who said “we need to do something fun and lighten the mood.”