Bar Harbor contingent seeks new cruise ship limits
The number of cruise ships scheduled for Bar Harbor keeps rising, so a contingent of residents wants to refine passenger cap and other limits.
The town currently is expecting 171 for the coming season, anchoring off the downtown wharf and tendering passengers to land.
And the town is looking to repurpose an old ferry terminal for cruise ship use, which would allow the ships to dock and also alleviate downtown congestion.
The contingent of residents is seeking to refine passenger cap limits for the downtown site, and proactively draft passenger cap and cruise ship length limits for the second site, the Mount Desert Islander reported.
Jim Blanchard, who heads a committee to begin the process for a citizens initiative ordinance amendment, told the Islander that the number of visitors to Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island has been increasing faster than local communities can handle, creating issues that need to be addressed.
“We can’t make the town or the national park or the island any bigger,” so moving to limit the number of visitors may be warranted, he said.
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