The Dept. of Transportation (DOT) plans “to place a conservation easement on roughly 129 acres of what was formerly Sherman Lake,” according to an Aug. 25 e-mail from Senior Property Manager Ray Quimby to Newcastle Town Administrator Ron Grenier.
According to Quimby, the “easement is intended to protect the marsh area that was re-created when the [Rt. 1] dam was breached in fall 2005.”
Seventeen individuals or organizations currently own the 129 acres, including the Damariscotta River Association and Pine Island Mgt. Inc. Fifteen of the parcels are in Newcastle, two in Edgecomb.
The parcels on which DOT intends to purchase the easement, according to a spreadsheet listing the names of the owners, the total size of their property and the size of the proposed easement, vary in size from less than an acre to 20.65 acres.
According to an Aug. 25 e-mail from Mike Moniz, a real estate appraiser and DOT contractor, to Grenier, the state may take the land via eminent domain if “one or two (or all) of the owners don’t accept the state’s offer or negotiate a settlement.”
Moniz “will send each owner a plan and the general terms of the conservation easement [and] offer to meet with them at their convenience,” he wrote. Moniz did not return a message seeking comment.
The “utility” of the land in question is “marginal,” Quimby said. “You have to determine what the impact of that easement is on the full fee value.”
The easement should have little impact on property taxes, as, according to Quimby, “the areas… are not included on the town’s tax rolls.”
DOT “hopes to achieve two basic goals with this project,” Quimby wrote. “The first goal will be to restore the marsh area with desirable indigenous vegetation and control invasive species. The second goal will be to create a wetland bank site where the Department will create wetland ‘credits’ that can be drawn down to offset wetland impacts on transportation projects in the midcoast region.”
The primary environmental concern for DOT is the presence of phragmites, an invasive reed, in the marsh, Project Manager Deane Van Dusen said.
Regardless of the method of introduction – wind, birds or tidal cycles – the weed “is there,” Van Dusen said. “It’s on the marsh surface.” Phragmites “squeeze out native vegetation,” and, if left unattended, can “essentially [take] over the marsh,” Van Dusen said.
That’s the situation at Scarborough Marsh, Van Dusen said. “There’s no real habitat value there,” he said. “It essentially becomes a sterile marsh.”
For now, DOT will spray the phragmites on the marsh surface with herbicides on an annual basis.
DOT has already completed this year’s spraying, Van Dusen said. “The phrag [sic] has pretty much gone into dormancy” for the season, he said.
“We will probably be back in the spring… late May, early June,” Van Dusen said. As is the situation at Scarborough Marsh, “We don’t ever plan to eradicate it at Sherman,” he said. “It’ll be an ongoing maintenance and mitigation issue.”
DOT can fight phragmites and restore indigenous vegetation without an easement, however, Van Dusen said. The true purpose of the easement is “to establish a federal wetlands bank site,” he said.
The Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) must approve DOT’s application to establish the site, after which DOT will “claim credit for… wetland mitigation credits” in order to offset “wetland impacts that exceed regulatory thresholds” on future construction projects, such as the proposed Wiscasset bypass.
The purchase of the easement is “only to do with the bank credit,” Van Dusen said. “We’ve done most of the restoration already.”
After DOT purchases the easement, the landowners will retain most of their rights to the property, Van Dusen said. The only meaningful restriction is that the easement forbids the construction of any permanent structure, such as a dock or pier.
As of Sept. 30, Marva Nesbit, who, with her husband, Edward Dougherty, owns one of the properties on the spreadsheet, said she hadn’t heard from DOT.
“They aren’t my favorite people,” Nesbit said. Nesbit and Dougherty purchased the land in 1991 “as a place to retire,” with the lakefront location figuring as a key attraction.
Nesbit blamed DOT for the fall 2005 collapse of the earthen dam that hemmed in Sherman Lake. “DOT was responsible for maintaining the spillways,” Nesbit said, but they didn’t. As a result, the spillways clogged and overflowed and the dam collapsed, she said.
According to Van Dusen, the breach occurred during a “500-year storm event” that poured seven inches of rain on the lake. Flotsam on the surface stuck in the spillway, causing the breach.
“Our maintenance crews were checking it on a weekly basis,” Van Dusen said. “I don’t think anybody could have kept it from breaching.”
Later, DOT widened and deepened the channel and dug a secondary channel to remove tidal restrictions, completing Sherman Lake’s reversion to a tidal marsh. Now, it flushes “as it normally would if Rt. 1 had never been built there,” Van Dusen said.
The change disappointed Nesbit. “If I wanted to live on a mudflat, I would have bought land on a mudflat,” Nesbit said. “It is a beautiful marsh, if you’re fond of marshes. It’s quite lovely, but it’s not a lake.”
Nesbit and Dougherty built their house in 2003 and moved in full time in early October 2004. Almost a year to the day after the move, “We woke up to no lake,” Nesbit said. “We were devastated.”
“We’re the ones that are the most impacted,” Nesbit said in an Oct. 2 interview at the couple’s sprawling, postcard-worthy property. “Nobody else is quite this open or this close.”
The impacts of the lake’s disappearance have been varied, for Nesbit and for the ecology of the area. Eagles and herons, regular pre-drainage visitors, still frequent the marsh. Other animals are now merely a part of the region’s history.
“Every Father’s Day,” Nesbit said, snapping turtles came ashore to lay their eggs on the Nesbit’s lawn. Nesbit even made a shelter for the eggs to protect them from predators. “That was my saddest loss,” she said.
The human habitat has changed, too. “This was a 12-month lake,” Nesbit said. In addition to the obvious attraction of the summer months – fishing, kayaking – Sherman Lake was a popular destination for snowmobiling and ice fishing, she said. “There was always someone out here.”
Now, “Every once in a while you see kayakers,” Dougherty said, but most of the time the marsh is abandoned.
Two floats sit on the couple’s lawn – another casualty of the change. “The current is so ferocious,” Nesbit said, they can’t anchor the floats. The couple’s 1400 feet of lakefront property dropped to 800 – a 600-foot decrease, although without an accompanying dip in their tax bill, Nesbit said.
Despite their colored history with DOT, the easement doesn’t seem to concern Nesbit and Dougherty. Because of shoreland zoning rules passed in 2009, “We couldn’t build on it anyway,” Nesbit said.
According to the DOT spreadsheet, Nesbit and Dougherty own a total of 12.62 acres, 8.70 of which the town includes in their assessment. DOT plans to place the easement on 4.09 acres of Nesbit and Dougherty’s land.
Stephen Hufnagel, Executive Director of the Damariscotta River Association (DRA), said the easement “won’t undermine our objectives.”
“Our primary objective is to keep [the land] open to public uses” such as hunting and hiking, Hufnagel said.
Hufnagel said he has had “preliminary” discussions with DOT about the matter. The DRA parcel encompasses 31.28 acres, according to the DOT spreadsheet, 21.48 of which the town includes in their assessment. DOT plans to place the easement on 9.19 acres of the DRA land.
Hufnagel’s primary concern rests not with the easement, but with herbicide use. “We would hope that [DOT uses] the least harmful method” available to control the phragmites, Hufnagel said. “It’s not a bad goal to limit its spread… it just should be done in a thoughtful way.”
