SULLIVAN – Levon Tracey owns a roadside seafood shop on Route 1, routinely selling the freshest seafood to local residents and tourists from a small, blue building. From the shop, patrons can look over Flanders Bay and the Mount Desert hills rising in the distance.

The local clam diggers who deal with him normally bring in about one bushel of steamers after a day’s digging in the muddy, nearby flats of eastern Hancock County.

In September, however, diggers, began hauling in three to four bushels at a time, all because a significant 113-acre clam flat in Flanders Bay was reopened after being closed for 10 years.

The flat, which had been closed because of pollution in the bay, became a magnet for diggers up and down the coast.

Because the towns of Sullivan and Sorrento, which encompass part of the flat, do not have local shellfish ordinances, diggers with an eye on the profitable harvest from a pristine site came from beyond Hancock County to dig when the flat was opened, according to local officials and residents.

As many as 30 or 40 diggers from all over the Maine coastal area – including Wiscasset, Machias and even Augusta – came to get a crack at the bounty, officials said.

“There were so many – people were digging right next to each other,” said Sullivan digger Danny Carter Jr., who was able to dig 11/2 bushels a night. “Everybody was getting in each other’s way.”

Because of the rush, the majority of harvestable clams already have been taken out of the flat, Tracey said. The flat likely will need another year just to replenish itself, he said.

“It should be shut right back down again,” Tracey said.

The Flanders Bay flat has the potential to inject more than a $250,000 annually into the local economy, but because of the digging rush that followed its opening, local diggers likely will have to wait another year before they can reap most of the benefits.

Some $280,000 worth of clams could be harvested each year from the flat located off the East Sullivan town landing, according to officials with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Hancock County Soil and Water Conservation District and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

One acre of a clam flat annually can produce roughly $2,500 worth of clams, DMR scientist Robert Goodwin said recently.

“That’s if it is a sustainable flat,” Goodwin said.

The flat, which is right off the town landing ramp, is on the northern end of Flanders Bay, overlooked on one side by farm fields and by private homes on the wooded Sorrento shore on the other. A stream runs from a nearby saltwater farm onto the flat. A digger on the flat also would be able see rental cabins and a campground on the shore and a cluster of islands out in Flanders Bay.

The site at the northern end of the bay between East Sullivan and Sorrento has been closed since before 1992, Goodwin said. At the time, the flat was being polluted by nearby septic systems and a pond and stream that drain into the bay. About 25 head of cattle at a nearby farm were walking through the stream and drinking from the pond, he said.

The flat was reopened Sept. 19 after approximately $32,000 of state and federal money was spent on environmental improvements at Flanders Reach Farm, owned by Gavin Watson. Fencing was put up to keep the cattle out of the stream and pond, and a new well and watering system for the animals was installed, Goodwin said.

The septic systems, one of which is at the nearby Mountain View Campground and two that are connected to private homes in Sorrento, since have been fixed to keep sewage from seeping into the bay, he added.

No fines were levied and no legal action was taken against any of the polluting landowners, Goodwin said, because all cooperated with the various agencies when the problems were brought to their attention. The acrimonious, standoff controversy that frequently accompanies such problems was nonexistent.

“Nothing like that happened over there,” he said.

Goodwin added that Watson had been hoping to avoid any publicity associated with the issue, but he stressed the farm owner and the other landowners have been eager to get the problems fixed.

There are other flats outside Sullivan that are bigger and have been closed for longer periods of time, the state scientist said.

“I have closures that encompass thousands of acres,” Goodwin said. The southern end of Mount Desert Island, where the villages of Southwest Harbor, Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor all have sewage treatment plants and where a lot of licensed overboard discharges are located, is a good example.

“There’s so much [pollution] in a small area that you have a fairly big closure,” Goodwin said.

Roland Dupuis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which worked with Watson to address the pollution concerns at his farm, said the degree of accomplishment in reopening the flat in Flanders Bay is found not in the size of the flat or the length of its closure.

It is found in the example it sets and the money it provides.

“You’re bringing income to an area that needs income by protecting the environment,” Dupuis said, adding that the $280,000 anticipated annual revenue is a good return for an investment of $32,000. “I think it’s an incredibly successful project.”

Polly Tracey, Levon Tracey’s wife, is working with a group of Sullivan residents to get the town to adopt a shellfish ordinance.

She said anyone who is licensed by the state to dig clams can do so in towns where no local shellfish ordinance exists. The group is hoping Sorrento also will draft and adopt a local ordinance, she added.

Tracey said she and others in Sullivan are proposing that the town issue only one permit to someone from outside of Sullivan for every 10 Sullivan residents who get permits.

“This is what most of the other towns have,” she said.

The town’s elected officials were not concerned about adopting a local ordinance until they saw how many diggers from out of town showed up to dig in Flanders Bay, she said.

“I don’t think our selectmen realized the money that comes out of this flat,” Tracey said, adding that she hopes Sullivan will have a proposed ordinance ready to adopt by the end of the year.

Carter said he is glad he was able to make some money by digging in the reopened flat, but he wishes it had been protected by a local ordinance before the closure was repealed by the DMR.

“I wish they had waited and told the residents instead of telling everyone,” Carter said. “We don’t have much clam flats in Sullivan anyway.”