N.H. lawmaker wants to raise border issue

CONCORD, N.H. – A New Hampshire lawmaker wants state officials to take another look at the boundary dispute between Maine and New Hampshire.

Laura Pantelakos, a Democrat from Portsmouth, has sponsored a bill to establish a commission to update the state’s borderlines – something actually required from time to time by state law.

She hopes a new look at the New Hampshire border will put the boundary along the Maine edge of the Piscataqua River, placing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire.

Some shipyard workers living in New Hampshire hope to get the income tax Maine has levied onto their paychecks rescinded, as well.

Two years ago, New Hampshire fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to prove the boundary places the shipyard in its territory. But Pantelakos and some shipyard workers feel the issue is unresolved.

The court granted a motion by Maine to dismiss the case without ruling on its merits, and let stand an earlier ruling that effectively placed the shipyard in Maine.

The court had said that the boundary issue had been settled in 1977, when the high court granted a consent decree that “definitively fixed the Piscataqua River boundary at the middle of the river’s main channel of navigation.”

“I think it should be put to rest once and for all,” Pantelakos said of the border dispute.

“We spent over $600,000 to put that into litigation,” she said of the original lawsuit. “I don’t care about the shipyard, particularly. I want to know if that island belongs to New Hampshire. We should be the ones that have the say on it. Everything I’ve seen and read says it is in New Hampshire.”

The “island” Pantelakos was referring to is Seavey Island, the main piece of land on which the Navy yard now sits. The shipyard, opened in 1800, is actually located on a small cluster of islands that have been linked together.