WISCASSET

A divided Board of Selectmen voted to adopt Wiscasset Municipal Airport’s Master Plan 3-2 in a special meeting Tuesday night, moving forward with a controversial plan that may entail acquiring easements from airport abutters.

An environmental assessment carried out by Stantec, a Topsham-based consulting service, determined that trees located off airport grounds have grown to protrude into airspace to a height that is deemed unsafe, according to Federal Aviation Administration standards for aircraft on both ascent and descent.

The Wiscasset Municipal Airport is required, per grant assurances with the FAA, to clear obstructions — such as trees — to maintain a safe operational environment. Acquiring avigation easements to remove these obstructions was recommended in the assessment and this recommendation was taken up in the Airport Master Plan.

Many of the trees flagged as obstructions are located on privately owned Chewonki Campground and, according to owners Pam Brackett and Ann Beck, the trees are essential to their business and livelihood, as they delineate the space around nearly half of the campground sites and offer shade to campers.

The matter of adopting the plan had come before the board in June and selectmen tied 2-to-2 — with one selectmen absent — said interim town manager Don Gerrish.

The issue was carried forward a month, during which time the town engineer reviewed the plan and added amended language that stat- ing that avigation easements will be required over private land, but the size and location of these easements will be “determined through a separate project.”

The amendments did not include language requested by Brackett and Beck, said attorney Jim Hopkinson, of Hopkinson & Abbondanza, representing the campground owners.

“This master plan is aggressive, even with the amended language,” said Hopkinson. “My language proposed that we take a look at these further studies, and part of the studies are to look at a couple options,” that propose alternatives to the Airport Master Plan, which he said would still accord with FAA regulations.

Chairman Pam Dunning recommended that the plan be adopted as a plan has to be in place before federally funded negotiations can occur between the town and property owners.

“One thing to keep in mind is that the master plan is simply a plan, it is not a contract,” said Dunning, adding that the plan could be adopted and discarded at a later date.

“There is no funding to work on easement negotiations unless there is a master plan in place,” she said, “and we would like to make this as benign a process as possible.”

Selectman Ben Rines Jr. questioned the airport’s ongoing use if safety was such a critical concern.

“How can we have planes take off and land all the time?” said Rines. “How can we have an airshow if safety is such a concern?”

Airport manager Ervin Deck said that trees protruding into airspace did not mean the airport was unsafe under all conditions, but that for certain types of aircraft approaching in certain weather it was unsafe.

“The killer for all pilots is getting low and slow,” said Eugene Fairfield, a pilot that uses the Wiscasset Municipal Airport. “And when the trees are up in the airspace, you really start to wonder if you are going to have issues in a hurry.”

Deb Mensinger, a Chewonki Campground patron, said that she returned annually to the campground because of the safe and peaceful environment it offered, and recited an exhaustive list of the other local businesses that she shopped at while staying there.

“We love the world lovingly created and tended by the Brackett clan,” said Mensinger. “The trees are part of what makes this home.”

Anne Leslie, an employee of the Chewonki Foundation, who questioned the degree of growth planned for the airport in the context of the size and character of the town, said, “I love the airport but I think we need to scale back and support the abutting businesses.”

“My customers bring a lot into this town as well,” said Ken Boudin, chairman of the Airport Advisory Committee, “and my customers use this airport on a regular basis.”

Boudin added that the goal of the master plan was not to bring in larger aircraft, especially considering the nearness of Brunswick Executive Airport, but simply to make the airport safer.

A project to seal the cracks on the airport’s runway was recently carried out, said Scott Rollins, the Maine Department of Transportation aviation director, noting that Wiscasset’s runway was in particularly bad shape.

“That’s just a holding action for a few years,” said Rollins. “Safety is our main concern — we don’t want a fatality. Just because an accident hasn’t occurred does not mean one isn’t going to.”

With an airport master plan adopted, work contained in the airport layout plan section and approved by the FAA, is funded 90 percent by the FAA, 5 percent by the Maine DOT, and 5 percent by the town. The cost of reconstructing the runway is estimated at $1.2 million.

“I believe that there will be a way to have a win-win here,” said Gerrish. “I believe … this community isn’t going to allow anything else but to have a win-win. This community cannot afford not to have both of these assets working and being part of this community.”

Gerrish said that changing the wording of the master plan is not the important issue, “it’s just words … the real part of this is when the community sits down with Ann and her family and you work out with landscape architects and engineers” how to save as many trees and campsites as possible.

“You’ve got to move on,” he said. “It’s an issue that is so important and indecision is worse than decisions in my opinion.”

Selectmen Dunning, Jeff Slack and Tim Merry voted in favor of adopting the airport master plan, and selectmen Bill Barnes and Ben Rines were opposed.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com