Attempts to curb invasive species on the coast and preserve affected fisheries, the potential and actual fracturing of Regional School Units, and the question of access to beaches via a prescriptive easement on private land are among several other issues that faced the local community in 2014.

Green Crabs

The invasive green crab grabbed the attention of clammers, scientists, local and state officials and the media in recent years, which continued throughout 2014 as efforts were put into place to preserve soft-shell clam populations that dwindled owing to crab predation, threatening Maine’s $15 million soft-shell clam industry.

Notable among these efforts is the Heal Eddy Restoration Project in Georgetown. The project attempts to analyze the efficacy of clam farming, or aquaculture, and serve as a model for a sole-proprietor clam farm. The Heal Eddy Restoration Project is spearheaded by harvester Chris Warner, John Hagan, of the nonprofit Manomet, and Jay Holt, a member of the Georgetown Shellfish Conservation Committee.

Harpswell clammers have taken steps toward maintaining clam populations with a massive seeding effort jointly undertaken with Brunswick harvesters. Additionally, the town is currently working to construct an aquaculture co-op through which the town would lease 20 percent of its intertidal area to harvesters.

Additional conservation efforts and studies have taken place in Arrowsic, Woolwich, West Bath, Freeport and Wiscasset, including fencing projects, upweller projects and seeding and trapping projects undertaken by students of Regional School Unit 1 in collaboration with Brian Beal of the Downeast Institute and the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust.

Regional School Unit Withdrawals

Following a 2013 vote to withdraw from Regional School Unit 12, the town of Wiscasset formed a standalone school district for the 2014-15 school year. At the 2014 annual Town Meeting, residents voted to apply $1.25 million from the town’s reserve account to reduce a potential 27 percent tax hike caused by the withdrawal to a 9.88 percent increase.

The town’s first independent school board was elected and immediately set to the task of reducing educational costs in future years, which led to a Dec. 9 townwide vote to close Wiscasset Primary School and move grades 1-4 to Wiscasset Middle School and grades 7 and 8 to Wiscasset High School.

Freeport voters rejected a bid to withdraw from Regional School Unit 5 by a margin of 76 votes at the Nov. 4 gubernatorial election. Moving forward as a three-town school unit with Durham, Freeport and Pownal, RSU 5 has resumed postponed plans to renovate Freeport High School.

A Jan. 13 withdrawal Special Election is still pending for West Bath, when residents will consider adopting a withdrawal agreement with Regional School Unit 1.

The withdrawal movement originated in 2013 over a desire for local control over the West Bath elementary school and ran parallel to a lawsuit between the town and Regional School Unit 1 over what the town alleged was an incorrectly applied funding formula.

A partial summary judgment was handed down in June by Justice Andrew Horton, who presided over the Sagadahoc County Superior Court case, which supported West Bath’s claim that the town was overcharged $1,919,380 by RSU 1. Horton also excused RSU 1 towns Arrowsic and Woolwich from involvement in further proceedings. Phippsburg was not implicated in the lawsuit.

In December, the Bath City Council voted to approve a $1.2 million settlement to West Bath. An additional $50,000 is to be paid to West Bath by RSU 1’s insurance carrier.

Cedar Beach

This year saw a significant win for the nonprofit Cedar Beach/Cedar Island Supporters group that has pursued access to beach areas on Harpswell’s Bailey Island after the private Cedar Beach Road leading to nearby beaches was closed in 2011.

The group filed two lawsuits, one against then-road owners, Charles and Sally Abrahamson. The road was purchased by Betsy Atkins’s company Gables Real Estate LLC in July 2014. The second lawsuit, filed against Jonathan and Rachel Aspatore, owners of a parcel containing a footpath to Cedar Beach that they had closed to the public, was settled in mediation.

Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills presided over the case which went to trial in May. A judgment was filed in September finding that an easement exists allowing the public to travel down Cedar Beach Road to the beach. The ruling is currently under appeal, and CB/CIS are seeking the addition of an article to the 2015 Town Meeting warrant to issue $110,000 to the group for legal expenses.

Emergency Services

Freeport was plagued by a series of structure fires in 2014 — starting just before the new year on Dec. 24, 2013, when a fire destroyed a mobile home on Starboard Lane. This was followed by a fire on Jan. 16 that started in the basement of a split-level ranch on Griffin Road, and two fires that occurred on Jan. 19 and 20 at neighboring mobile homes on Ware Road. Less than a week later, a fire gutted an RV and a garage on Fernald Road.

In March, a lobster boat and dinghy caught fire off Flying Point Road, and a basement fire at the Doherty North Freeport Store on Wardtown Road forced the owners to dispose of the store’s entire inventory.

In April, an electrical fire set a mobile home ablaze, but the call came in during a meeting at the fire department and the responders had the fire under control within 16 minutes of receiving the call.

A July three-alarm fire on Balsam Lane drew in mutual support from more than eight towns who responded on scene and for station coverage to manage co-occurring calls in neighboring communities.

On Dec. 20, six people escaped an apartment building fire on Unity Lane. The residents in the two-unit building were alerted to the blaze by a working fire alarm, though several pets perished in the fire.

A team of four is required to staff a fire truck responding to a fire, said Fire Chief Darrel Fournier, though currently the department is budgeted for two on-duty firefighters. Additionally, the number of volunteers has declined in recent years, while the emergency call volume has nearly doubled.

Other towns have seen a matching decline in volunteers, including Harpswell and Woolwich.

At Harpswell’s annual March Town Meeting, residents voted unanimously to raise and appropriate $238,920 to continue roundthe clock paramedic service through Mid Coast Health Services. Following this the town voted to provide $180,000 to Harpswell’s three volunteer Fire and Rescue departments for operating and capital expenses.

The town also compiled a report in response to a more than 240 percent townwide increase emergency medical services spending in the past decade. The report called for increased collaboration between the town’s fire departments.

In October, Woolwich was seeking 20 new volunteers to fill emergency training classes in an effort to respond to 100 percent of Woolwich’s emergency medical services calls in-house.

The town was estimated to respond to roughly 85 percent of EMS calls, according to Woolwich EMS Director Bill Longley Jr.

North East Mobile Health Services is the primary transporting agency for the town, said Longley, but the average response time to Woolwich from the North East’s area base in Topsham is 17 minutes.

Wiscasset Road

The story spread quickly to national media outlets after the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen approved the name “Redskin’s Drive” for a private road in a new subdivision off Bradford Road.

The five-member board was divided 3-1 in approving the name, with one abstention. Chairwoman of the selectboard Pamela Dunning stood in opposition to the name, noting that many people found the term “Redskin,” which was formerly the Wiscasset High School mascot, offensive.

Chief Kirk Francis of the Penobscot Indian Nation wrote a letter to the Wiscasset selectmen to express “grave disappointment” in the board’s decision, as did James Sappier, a former chief and Penobscot Elder Council member.

The issue was resolved after the sign was removed and the road owners requested that the selectboard approve the new name “Micmac Drive” to replace the previously approved name.

Chewonki Campground

Also in Wiscasset, town officials struggled to balance the safety concerns addressed in the Wiscasset Municipal Airport Master Plan, with the needs of a long-standing local business.

The Master Plan called for the removal of trees located off-airport grounds — most significantly on Chewonki Campground — that protrude into airspace to a height that is deemed unsafe for incoming aircraft per Federal Aviation Administration standards.

Campground owners Pam Brackett and sister Ann Beck said the removal of the trees highlighted in an environmental assessment would eliminate 23 of the campgrounds 47 sites, and would devastate the campground which was first opened in 1961, possibly forcing it to close.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved the Airport Master Plan in October.

Narcan Bill

Last year also saw the passage of a bill sponsored by State Rep. Sara Gideon, DFreeport, which expanded the use of the drug naloxone — also called Narcan — among first responders.

Gideon said that Freeport resident Neil Fishman, whose father developed naloxone, brought the increasing number of preventable opiate overdose related deaths to her attention. Naloxone is an opiate antagonist, which blocks receptors in the brain from receiving opiates.

The bill passed the House on April 16 with 142 votes in favor of, nine absent and none opposed, and the Senate with 35 votes in favor of and none opposed, and passed into law without Gov. Paul LePage’s signature on April 29.

The bill was especially important to local families affected by the statewide increase in opiate use, including Fishman, whose brother passed away from an overdose ten years prior, and the Keating family in Brunswick.

Brendan Keating, 22, son of P. Lynn Ouellette and Thomas Keating, and brother of Ryan and Katie, passed away on Dec. 16, 2013, from an accidental heroin overdose taken three days earlier at his family home in Brunswick.

In a February interview with The Times Record, Ouellette said of naloxone, “It’s an immediate intervention that can save lives. Our family has suffered so much, that anything we can do to help others not go through this is the reason enough (to pass the bill).”

Alewives

Towns along the Mid-coast also took steps to ensure robust alewives migrations in future years, with a new fish ladder put in at Nequasset Dam in Woolwich, and plans are underway for a new ladder at Center Pond in Phippsburg.

The Kennebec Estuary Land Trust began counting the alewife run up the Nequasset fish ladder in 2012 to assess the area impact of dwindling numbers of the anadromous fish that is popularly used as lobster bait.

KELT estimated a total run of 268,310 alewives this past year, up from an estimated run of 164,000 in 2012.

Two Bridges

The Industries Program at TBRJ took a big step forward with the introduction of a kiosk on the Wiscasset waterfront selling crafts made in the program’s woodshop, but also suffered a major setback when the woodshop was destroyed in a June fire.

The Industries Program is a self-sustaining business that operates inside the jail, and includes commissary services, a garden that supplies fresh produce to local food pantries and the woodshop, which has donated hundreds of handmade toys to the Lincoln and Sagadahoc County Toys for Tots campaigns.

Inmates that work in the Industries Program typically work eight-hour days and are paid $1.50 per hour, of which 25 percent goes to paying fines and restitution and 25 percent goes to pay room and board at the facility.

Owing to the dedicated labors of the inmate workers in the program and the support of officials in the jail’s administration, the woodshop was back up running in time for workers to donate hundreds of handmade creations to Toys for Tots Christmas toy drive.

METRO expansion

In September, the sevenmember Freeport Town Council approved the expansion of Greater Portland Transit District’s METRO bus service to Freeport 6-0, with one abstention.

The bus service will launch as a three-year pilot project that will cost Freeport $27,000 for 2015-16 service, $30,170 for 2016-17, and $32,443 for 2017- 18, according to the proposal provided by METRO.

Service will be offered from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, with optional Saturday service given additional funding. A flat fare of $3 will be charged for service.

The Brunswick Town Council has also been eyeing the possibility of extending METRO service to Brunswick, while Harpswell is considering public funding for a bus route operated by Coastal Trans Inc.

rgargiulo@timesrecord.com