Conservation Commission makes ship recommendations

[Jason]

BAR HARBOR — The town’s Conservation Commission has added its voice to those offering recommendations for better management of cruise tourism.

By Dick Broom, Maine Coast Now

Commission members voted unanimously Monday night to recommend that bus parking be eliminated on Main Street and that the town provide an incentive for low-emission buses to preserve air quality and reduce noise pollution. The commission also called for eliminating bus parking in and downhill from Agamont Park to preserve the “visual landscape.”

These and other recommendations will go to the consultant the state has hired to develop a comprehensive cruise ship management plan for Bar Harbor, and they will be on the agenda for the Town Council’s Dec. 5 meeting.

To protect water quality, the Conservation Commission recommends that all cruise ships be informed of state and local regulations regarding wastewater treatment and discharge, that all ships be required to inform the harbor master of their wastewater treatment systems, and that the cruise ship industry and the town support water quality monitoring around all ships in the harbor.

The commission also recommends steps that are already part of the cruise tourism consultant’s mandate: Examine the effect of tour buses on the town’s infrastructure, determine how cruise ship passengers affect the quality of “the Bar Harbor experience” for others, determine the optimum number of passengers the town can support each day while maintaining a high quality visitor experience, and determine the impact of cruise ship and tender traffic on commercial fishing.

In a memo to the council accompanying its recommendations, the Conservation Commission noted that a goal of the town’s 1993 Comprehensive Plan was to preserve the existing level of cruise ship and tour bus visitation.

“It is unclear whether the goal was to maintain the number of ships or the number of passengers,” the memo said, “however, both the number of ships and the per-ship passenger capacity have increased dramatically since 1993.”