Damariscotta campground owner settles zoning dispute

DAMARISCOTTA – A Damariscotta campground owner who was fined $8.4 million for placing cabins too close to a pond will pay a fraction of that amount to settle the long-running case.

The state Attorney General’s Office and Clayton Howard have agreed to an out-of-court settlement in which Howard will pay a fine of $350,000 and move his cabins back from Pemaquid Pond.

Howard, the owner of the Lake Pemaquid Campground, was given the original fine for violating Maine’s shoreland zoning laws by placing 18 cabins within 100 feet of the pond.

Assistant Attorney General Jeff Pidot said the fine is still the largest ever paid to the state for a zoning violation. Seen as a test of the shoreland zoning laws, the case has been watched closely by environmentalists and regulators.

“Our purpose all along has been to see that the shoreland zoning laws are complied with,” Pidot said Friday. “That purpose is achieved with this settlement.”

The state began enforcement action against the campground on April 3, 1998, four years after receiving a complaint about “a lot of cabins” on the pond. The case went to trial in November 2000.

In June 2001, Maine Superior Court Justice Donald Marden ruled that Lake Pemaquid Inc. had violated shoreland zoning laws by placing 18 cabins within 100 feet of Pemaquid Pond.

Marden ordered the cabins moved and assessed the $8.4 million fine based on the number of cabins and the number of days the violations existed. The violations dated to 1986 and totaled 84,724 days, resulting in the huge fine.

Howard appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, arguing that in the mid-1980s the town’s planning board, and later its zoning board of appeals, determined that the cabins were allowed because they existed before shoreland zoning laws were enacted.