York Town News
Local officials clash over Union Bluff permits
Macdonald claims corruption, DeCoteau cites misunderstanding
By Jennifer L. Saunders
Major work was underway at the Atlantic House, the former home of Pop's Shell Shack, pictured here, on Tuesday morning, Nov. 14. A formal groundbreaking on the project is set for next Tuesday, Nov. 21. After a lengthy Planning Board approval process, the Victorian-era hotel is being redeveloped to house a combination of retail, restaurant and other uses. Meanwhile, work continues at the nearby Union Bluff after what officials describe as an oversight in the permitting process last week.
Photos by Steve Rasche
YORK BEACH - While the long-anticipated Atlantic House renovation got underway in a very tangible sense on Tuesday, Nov. 14, the nearby Union Bluff project is continuing on schedule after the Maine Department of Environmental Protection explored allegations of illegal fill at the site.
A call to Maine DEP by at least one resident with concerns about construction in a dune area brought the issue to a head last week.
JoAnn Fryer of CLD Engineering, one of the firms working on the project, said Chris Coppi of Maine DEP visited the site following a call from a citizen alleging material stored in an inn-owned parking lot was seeping into the Atlantic Ocean.
"I didn't notice anything while I was there, but someone could have seen something when it was raining," Coppi confirmed Tuesday.
Town officials, too, indicated they saw no evidence of such seepage upon prior inspections of the site.
Coppi said the developer believed the work being conducted was exempt from such a permit because it was repair and maintenance; however, because of the location of portions of the site on a frontal dune, the DEP permit was required.
"It's not a big deal," he said of the misunderstanding, explaining a letter of warning had been issued.
The next step for the development team, after being made aware of the issue, was to file the paperwork in question, he said.
Fryer said Maine DEP required an after-the-fact permit, which has been filed. No stop-work order was issued and no fine has been assessed beyond the required application fee for the permit, she said.
Essentially, she explained, their team had been unaware of the need for the DEP permit because the dune in question is currently covered in pavement.
"As soon as we were aware of it, I've been in constant contact with DEP," Fryer said last week.
Code Enforcement Officer Tim DeCoteau explained that DEP views parcels by what was once there, and although the site might now be a parking lot, it was once a sand dune and is regulated by DEP as such.
"You would not think a paved street is a sand dune, but the DEP looks at what it has been in the past," he said.
The material in question, Fryer explained, was stored there temporarily as a sewer line installation project moved forward. A stone birm had been put up behind the material.
"We have a very conscientious contractor doing their due diligence," she said of the locally-based DeStefano and Associates. "There was no indication of that (siltation from the site) to us."
DEP evaluated the site, Coppi said, and he did not see any evidence of siltation, although he said he informed the contractors that there could have been additional erosion control in place.
The site is now secure, he said.
As to the DEP permit, DeCoteau said, "It's totally DEP jurisdiction. We have no rules for sand dunes."
However, he said, the town would have responded to any complaints of environmental issues such as the allegations of siltation, but the call was placed to Maine DEP and not the Code Enforcement Office.
"Whenever there's soil disturbance and erosion control is not properly handled, there is the possibility of contamination," DeCoteau said of the importance of such environmental issues, adding such erosion is considered the largest single contaminant of the Gulf of Maine. "It's a whole bunch of little problems and the cumulative effect is very significant."
However, the issues have some residents and officials once again at odds with the Code Enforcement Office.
Selectman Torbert Macdonald, Jr., said the storage of what he deemed as illegal fill - the construction material placed on a portion of the site without a prior DEP permit - is reminiscent of a past incident.
"We have an exact parallel situation, same actors - Union Bluff and DeCoteau - same set of violations as occurred in 1994," Macdonald said. "This is recidivism and corruption … and I'm really not going to let go of it."
As of press time, Macdonald could not be reached for clarification on his allegations.
In a letter to The Independent, local resident and former selectman Ron Nowell shared a similar point of view with Macdonald.
The incident, he wrote, "begs the nagging question of after three weeks of the largest construction project in York Beach in half a century, why did it take Timmy (DeCoteau) three weeks to awaken to the fact that it lacked the necessary permits? Also, why did it take citizen phone calls to DEP in South Portland, triggering a site visit by DEP, to alert Timmy to the illegal situation?"
In an interview with The Independent earlier in the week, DeCoteau explained his side of the story in the wake of one area newspaper's headline alleging illegal fill at the site.
There was, in fact, confusion at the local level last week when DeCoteau was asked by a reporter from that other area newspaper about the project, and DeCoteau was unable to locate the town-required shoreland permit in the file at the time of the call.
The permit had, in fact, been granted through the Planning Board's findings of fact on the project, but was not included as a separate document in the project file.
The confusion regarding the local permit, and the fact that it had been in place all the time, was a direct factor of a smaller-than-usual staff at the Code Enforcement Office, DeCoteau said. For about six months, now-retired Senior Managing Code Enforcement Officer Mark Badger's post been vacant and, due to medical concerns, Tom James' once full-time post is shared by other part-time inspectors.
Due to work scheduling conflicts, no one from Code Enforcement was available to attend the preconstruction meeting on the Union Bluff project, DeCoteau said, and thus their office was not aware the local shoreland permit in question had been granted.
Town Planner Steve Burns and Town Manager Rob Yandow confirmed that was the case. They also confirmed that DeCoteau consulted with Burns after receiving the request from the newspaper and learned the local permit was in place. DeCoteau attempted to clarify that the permit had, in fact, been granted at the local level, but the reporter could not be reached and the article was printed without that clarification, according to town officials.
As Burns put it, "Tim wasn't aware of it because they were short-staffed."
At issue, DeCoteau said, is not a lack of concern on the town's part but the present reality that there are not enough code enforcement officers to go around. He added that the voter-approved shoreland enforcement position has yet to be filled and the search for Badger's replacement continues.
"We have the equivalent of three full-time people," he said. "With three people, we can't be everywhere and we can't see everything. … Call us. We follow up on every complaint. We always have, and I hope we always will. It's very important to us, especially environmental issues."
