BAR HARBOR, Maine — People who live on Norway Drive north of Route 3 might be getting a little help with their backyard water problems, if a plan endorsed Tuesday night by the Town Council works.
Residents of the Salisbury Cove neighborhood who have been having flooding problems in their basements and backyards took the matter into their own hands earlier this year when one of them blocked off a culvert under Route 3 to prevent water from draining from a small portion of Hamilton Pond into their backyards. Residents of the neighborhood won’t say who shoved a large mooring ball into the culvert, but credit the act with solving their flooding problems for several months, until the ball was discovered and removed in early July by state highway workers.
Why the small section of Hamilton Pond east of Norway Drive has increased in size in recent decades, and who is responsible for the flooding and an old drainage system in the backyard of Norway Drive resident Wayne Gray, has been discussed and debated heavily in the past several months by state and local officials and neighborhood residents. Increased rainfall and possible upstream drainage issues have been cited by people involved in the neighborhood issue as contributing factors.
People who live on the road also have indicated that years ago either the state, which put in the section of Route 3 between Hamilton Pond and their homes in the early 1960s, or the town had installed or maintained, at least informally, the drainage system on Gray’s property. After residents of the neighborhood raised the issue with Maine Department of Transportation officials last month, the state looked into what its responsibility to the draining system might be.
Dale Doughty, DOT’s eastern region manager, indicated in a letter sent last week to Chip Reeves, Bar Harbor’s director of public works, that the state is not responsible for the failing drainage system or for flooding outside the Route 3 right-of-way. But the state is willing to provide technical support to the town in addressing the problem, Doughty added.
Councilor Jane Disney called Tuesday for the town to come up with a solution for improving the drainage between Hamilton Pond and the ocean shore in Salisbury Cove, but no other councilor supported the idea. Instead, councilors ended up voting 7-0 to spend $4,700 to install a separate culvert under Norway Drive between the small portion of Hamilton Pond and the rest of the water body.
The large portion of the pond is drained into the ocean by a dam owned by Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, but there is no culvert between the larger section of the pond and the smaller section that drains under Route 3 onto the residential properties. Reeves estimated that the water level in the smaller section of the pond is about 12 to 18 inches higher than in the main pond, and that connecting the two might help solve the flooding problem.
Reeves told the council he has contacted the Maine Department of Environmental Protection about the issue and that department officials told him they have no objections to the installation of the culvert.
Officials and residents acknowledged that the new culvert might not completely eliminate the threat of flooding in the neighborhood, but hope that it will help address the issue in both the short and long runs.
“I think stormwater is going to be the thing that does everybody in in the coming decade,” said Disney, who used to head the now-defunct MDI Water Quality Coalition. “I agree we have to make a decision immediately. I hope the cheapest solution works for us.”
