ARROWSIC

While Michigan may beat out Maine for most lighthouses per capita, the unassuming town of Arrowsic may just boast the most lighthouses per capita of any municipality.

With around 500 residents, Arrowsic is home to four lighthouses: Doubling Point Light, Squirrel Point Light and the Kennebec River Range Lights.

Three of these cherished lighthouses, however, face some major renovations if they are going to provide scenic views of and from the Kennebec for years to come.

The Kennebec River Range Lights

The only range lights in Maine, the two towers that make up the Kennebec River Range Lights were built 1898. Consisting of two lights 235 feet apart with one 18 feet higher, the range lights are an essential navigational aid to ships traversing the difficult shaped Fiddlers Reach portion of the Kennebec River. Though built at the end of the 19th century when ship traffic was more frequent, the lights continue to be of use to the destroyers coming to and from Bath Iron Works.

The range lights were transferred to the nonprofit Range Light Keepers by the Coast Guard nearly twenty years ago as part of the Maine Lights Program, along with dozens of lights along the Maine coast. While the Coast Guard remains responsible for ensuring that the lights are functional, the structures housing the lights and the surrounding property are now the responsibility of the small, locally operated nonprofit.

Floating down the Kennebec River, the range lights look largely the same now as they did to sailors going to and from Bath. But up close, the lights tell a different story. Shingles are rotting and falling away, and structural deficiencies are becoming apparent.

“We would come down here and do our annual maintenance, and one or two shingles would fall off and then we’d replace them. Then we’d repaint, and we repainted the whole tower,” said Michael Kreindler of the Range Light Keepers. “We thought we had one or two bad shingles, and then every year we’d have more!”

The group opted to do some tech borings to get to the root of the problem, and what they found wasn’t pretty. Over the years, trapped moisture in the tower had turn the sills to mush.

“What’s happening is that these shingles were put on in 1993-94 by the Coast Guard. And then they coated the building with a thick layer of rubberized [paint],” explained Kreindler. “It acted like a seal that trapped the moisture.”

“A lot of actions (the Coast Guard) took — with the best of intentions — (were) uninformed in terms of what you need to do for preserving a wood structure in a harsh environment,” said Kreindler.

Until the towers are opened up to begin renovations, there’s no way to know the extent of the damage. Obviously with serious damage to the sill, there could be major structural issues to contend with.

Surprisingly, the front tower that essentially sits in the water at high tide appears to be in better shape than the rear tower. Kreindler suspect that’s due to the fact that the rear tower is in a more closed, forested area that makes it hard to air out and dry.

An estimate for the materials and labor needed to restore both towers came to $40,000. Even though the Coast Guard was part of the problem, they won’t be ponying up the money to restore the structures. After all, the actual structures are no longer essential to river navigation.

“They’re feeling is, ‘Give us a galvanized pipe with a light on it stuck in the ground and we’re happy. That’s all we need,’” said Kreindler.

Donated materials and labor will help bring that estimate down, and already some companies and private individuals are stepping up to help. Modern Pest Control has donated their services for remove squirrels in the rear tower. Hancock Lumber and Sherwin Williams have also stepped in to donate supplies for the restoration efforts.

Still, Kreindler remains hopeful that other community-minded businesses will step up to sponsor the needed repairs.

Through long term savings and some recent fundraising, Kreindler says that they have enough funding to begin work on the rear tower, which is slated to start in August.

“We’ll make it work, one way or another. I have faith,” said Kreindler.

Squirrel Point Light

A little further down the Kennebec, Squirrel Point Light faces its own challenges. Part of the same navigational system helping ships going to and from Bath and other Kennebec River communities, Squirrel Point Light was also built in 1898.

Unlike the range lights, the light was never part of the Maine Lights Program, and was instead transferred to a private entity. A group called Citizens for Squirrel Point, represented pro bono by Verrill & Dana, LLP, successfully sued for the property to be returned to federal ownership, contending that that owners were not properly preserving the property, as required in the original deed. The nonprofit won the case in 2005.

Since 2005, Citizens for Squirrel Point has held the license for the property, but it’s been only in the last two years that a new management team has come in with a real drive to restore the lighthouse and surrounding historic structures.

They have their work cut out for them.

“Last year and this year, the outside work involved will be first and foremost stuff that is needed to stop the structure from moving toward collapse,” said President of Citizens for Squirrel Point Roman Wasilewski.

The sills in one structure had been completely rotted out, but last year the group was able to lift the building up off the ground and fix the underlying framework. Replacing shingles on the roofs of the various structures also took priority. Last year, the chimney on the main house was re-grouted.

But with multiple structures in desperate need of restoration and limited financial resources, the group has the unenviable task of choosing what challenges to tackle first, and when to prioritize cheaper aesthetic fixes over more costly and time consuming structural restoration.

“Our first thought was to go for a fresh paint job (on the lighthouse), because that can more or less be done by volunteers … so it would be comparatively cheap,” said Wasilewski.

But the group suspects that an analysis of the tower will reveal expensive repairs that will need to be made to much of the structure, and another paint job will need to be done anyways. The questions becomes, when will they be able to pay for those efforts, and should the group try to make the area look more attractive in the meantime?

“In practice, I don’t foresee that we’re going to have money to do the other stuff — that might be as much as $50-60,000 on a very rough estimate — for years,” Wasilewski.

The group has a number of volunteer days when possible, where as many as two dozen people show up to help with the labor intensive restoration process.

Similar to the range lights, the most significant hindrance to these repair efforts is money. There’s no fee to visit these lighthouses– they’re free and open to the public–and they don’t receive checks from the federal or state government to preserve the sites.

Yet without the efforts of these two volunteer organizations, the beautiful lighthouses lining the Kennebec River could become a thing of the past as they fall into disrepair. According to Wasilewski, stepping up to help could be as simple as signing up with the nonprofits organizing the restoration and preservation of the lights.

“We love to have people formally signed up in Citizens for Squirrel Point,” Wasilewski said. “And if you’re inspired to write a check, well, that’s wonderful.”

nstrout@timesrecord.com