BRUNSWICK

Greg Bergman, operator of Atlantic Water Taxi, is on a one-man mission to challenge what he calls a monopoly on freight service to the six most populated Casco Bay islands held by Casco Bay Lines.

The conflict between Bergman and Casco Bay Lines began near the end of June, when the ferry service issued a cease and desist letter to Bergman for transporting a load of lumber to one of several islands that Casco Bay Lines provides transit to. While seemingly innocuous, moving freight to certain islands in Casco Bay is illegal under regulations that have been in place since the early 1990s.

But in Bergman’s eyes, the regulations belong to a different time period, when the transportation industry on the waterfront was less robust. Instead of looking to the past, said Bergman, Casco Bay Lines should welcome his service not necessarily as a competitor, but as an add-on to the services available in Casco Bay.

“No one’s trying to undercut them, and no one really can,” argued Bergman. “All I can do is fill in the service for stuff they don’t do. And that’s why it’s just annoying that they feel like they both have the power and the inclination to crush anything that in their mind might undermine them.

“If I take a refrigerator out for an islander, you should be happy, not sad. You should not fight me on it. You should be like, ‘Hey, good! That fills in the gaps for us,’” he added.

But according to Hank Berg, general manager of Casco Bay Lines, those regulations are in place for a reason, and without them ferry service to the islands would not be financially feasible.

“We’re in the black only four months out of the year,” said Berg. “In all of the rest of the year we’re operating in the red, and pretty dramatically in the winter, because we have to have these big boats that we need during the summer. We have to maintain them during the winter and we have to go out to the islands to transport residents and other contractors and other people out to the islands.”

While it’s difficult to know what sort of financial impact Bergman’s competing freight service would have on the nonprofit’s bottom line, admits Berg, that’s not the real issue. The real problem is that if Bergman can offer freight service, so can others. Opening freight service to an unknown number of competitors has a chance to really damage the entity financially since freight makes up about 12 percent of their annual revenues.

“In the past, we have had several years where we operated at a deficit, and in some years at a significant deficit,” said Berg. “Given the fact that we’re very, very seasonal, we get about 60 percent of our revenue in the four summer months. It’s very important that we can make that revenue then so that it can carry us throughout the rest of the year.

“So if something like this happened, it would obviously impact our revenue,” said Berg. “And would probably result in the increase of fares, which haven’t been increased in almost a decade.”

While Bergman might find Casco Bay Lines’ exclusive rights unfair, he admits that the regulations are clear — but he thinks he may have found a loophole. The relevant statute has been erroneously listed as repealed for the last 16 years.

This could be important, since Bergman built a new vessel over the winter that would be able to carry freight, believing that the statute preventing him from doing so had been repealed. His new vessel, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the LCVP Higgins boats used for amphibious landings in World War II, is specifically designed to carry freight, anything from a refrigerator to a car. If he is not allowed to transport freight to the more populated islands in Casco Bay, he may have wasted a lot of money.

Bergman has now asked for a permit from the Public Utilities Commission, arguing among other things that he sank a lot of money into a boat to carry freight which he can no longer do because of a mistake by the reviser’s office. It’s unfair that he be punished for following the letter of the law, argued Bergman, even if the letter of the law was recorded incorrectly.

“In good faith, I read the statutes,” said Bergman. “In good faith, I did what I was supposed to.”

During the public comment period opened by the PUC, Casco Bay Lines has argued that the reviser’s mistakes are of no concern — the law is the law. Bergman himself notes that his legal arguments are not likely to prevail.

“I’m not going to hire attorneys, because it’s just not worth it,” said Bergman. “It seems pretty clear, whether I like it or not, the legislation was passed that gives them this ironclad definition.”

Whether or not Bergman prevails, he hopes that his situation will open a broader conversation about how to regulate Casco Bay.

The environment isn’t the same as it was when he first started operating a water taxi 19 years ago, said Bergman. Back then, his primary customer base was people who missed the ferry. Now, his customers are people trying to avoid the ferry. The argument that Casco Bay Lines is necessary for islanders “seems to fail the straight-face test today,” he said.

“It’s just small minded,” continued Bergman. “It’s not realizing both the advances that the community has made and the desires of those communities. There’s a reason there’s an explosion of water taxis.”

Yet despite increased demand, the growth in water taxis and other changes, the regulations governing transit to the six Casco Bay islands hasn’t been revisited in years.

“The part that’s unseemly to me is that Casco Bay Lines has spent its greater portion of the last 15 or 20 years maintaining its monopoly and trying to tighten things, not to loosen them. That just rubs me the wrong way,” said Bergman. “Aside from me and whatever my little acute issue is, it is sort of a chronic case for both the ferry service and its operation here. It really is something that needs to be revisited.”

nstrout@timesrecord.com