ELLSWORTH – There is no question that the feelings of mistrust between the local harbor master and the company dredging the city harbor run deep.

What is unclear, to some city officials at least, is how deep the harbor is at low tide and how much of the 5-acre harbor remains to be dredged.

Randy Heckman, who was just reappointed to a fifth consecutive term as Ellsworth’s harbor master, claims Northeast Marine Towing and Construction of Penobscot has not dredged deep enough in many places and that the project is 75 percent to 80 percent incomplete. Not only that, he has data from the federal government to prove it.

An attorney for the dredging company, however, insists Heckman’s allegations are untrue. Heckman, the company alleges, has a financial incentive to spoil its contract with the city and to redirect the project into the hands of another contractor.

City Council Chairman Lee Beal, who is filling in part time as acting city manager while the city searches for a replacement for former City Manager Tim King, said Thursday that the council intends to arrange a meeting sometime soon between all the involved parties.

The apparent purpose of the meeting would be to help the council members muddle their way through the murky waters of the controversy.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of the matter, the city has hired the surveying company Plisga and Day of Bangor to measure the depth of the harbor area and find out just how much more dredging needs to be done.

Heckman said Wednesday he is not the least bit confused about the state of the dredging project. He said the city has spent $332,000 of the $480,000 it has earmarked for the project, but that less than half of the harbor has been dredged.

“My opinion is that the project is only about 20 to 25 percent done,” Heckman said, basing his estimate on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey that he said was conducted in May.

“There’s obviously a problem,” he said.

The city’s harbor, which wraps around the northern end of the federal channel that extends from the harbor area to the mouth of the Union River, is supposed to be dredged to a depth of 5 feet at low tide, according to the harbor master. The Army Corps survey indicates only a small portion of the harbor has been dredged to this depth, Heckman said.

Nicholas Walsh, a Portland attorney representing the marine company, disputed Heckman’s view of the project. Walsh said Thursday that project is approximately 50 percent complete and that the operation is not running over budget.

“There’s money enough to finish the work,” he said.

Shawn Mahaney, a project engineer with the Army Corps in Augusta, said Thursday that the federal agency surveyed the harbor area twice in May. Mahaney estimated Thursday that 25 percent to 30 percent of the harbor has been dredged.

“It might be a little bit more,” Mahaney said. “There’s still a lot more area to be done.”

Adding to the confusion, former City Manager Tim King – who clashed frequently with Heckman over the dredging project – said last December that the project was 30 percent to 40 percent complete. King’s last day as Ellsworth’s city manager was on June 30.

Tom Leavitt, a retired surveyor and contractor overseeing the project for the city, said in April that the job was about halfway done.

According to Walsh, the Army Corps survey that Heckman has presented to the city to support his argument dates from before much of the dredging was accomplished this past spring. A more recent survey solicited by Northeast Marine Towing and Construction from Plisga and Day, the same company now surveying the harbor for the city, shows the project is further along than Heckman says it is, the attorney said.

“The data that was presented to the city was bad data,” Walsh said. “It’s irritating to us.”

Heckman has criticized publicly the pace and efficiency of the project, which started in December 2001. Federal law prohibits dredging in salmon spawning grounds, including the Union River, between April 15 and Nov. 1.

Northeast Marine Towing and Construction, in turn, filed a defamation lawsuit in April against Heckman in Hancock County Superior Court. The company accuses Heckman of making knowingly false statements to a local weekly newspaper and to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Heckman hoped to have the company’s contract terminated and another contract offered to a marine firm, Prock Marine Co. of Rockland, with which he has “an ongoing business relationship,” the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit doesn’t specify the nature of the relationship.

Heckman said one of his concerns is what will happen when the city has spent the $480,000 allocated for the project. Assuming the project is not complete, he said, it is not clear if the contractor will stop working or if the company will have to continue until it is finished.

“Nobody seems to know,” Heckman said.

According to Heckman’s data, $266,000 of the $332,000 spent on the project has gone to the Penobscot contractor. The remainder includes $44,000 that has been paid to city dredging coordinator Tom Leavitt and approximately $20,000 in engineering and surveying fees, according to paperwork at the harbor master’s office.

Dredging of the 3.75-mile federal channel, which was done by a Massachusetts-based marine company at a cost of $1.5 million, began in January 2001 and was completed in April 2002.

Besides the seasonal dredging ban, thick ice in the river this past winter, difficulty with removing large boulders on the river bottom, collapsed edges in the federal channel near the river’s mouth, and the lack of room for two dredging operations in the harbor area also have contributed to project delays.

“This has been an extremely challenging dredging project,” Walsh said.

Mahaney of the Army Corps said that the federal permit his office granted to Ellsworth for the harbor dredging project is good until 2006.

“If they don’t get it done, that’s their problem,” Mahaney said.