Now that April and openwater fishing season are at hand, it’s likely that in visiting your town’s institutes of higher learning – gas station, general store, barber shop – you’ll hear about an effort under way to have a public boat landing built at Branch Lake in Ellsworth. Unlike the city’s public landing, located near the dam at the lake’s outlet, a new landing would provide unobstructed access to the lake. To reach the lake from the Ellsworth landing, boats must pass beneath a causeway. Trouble is, the low overhead clearance and rock-cluttered water of the only useable passageway is restrictive to boats with windshields, canopies, control consoles, and deck chairs common to bass boats.

Sportsmen, therefore, feel they are being foul-hooked by the absence of a landing on Branch Lake proper. Burying the barb deeper is the realization that the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife doesn’t manage lakes and ponds that don’t have adequate access. Accordingly, the Branch Lake salmonid fishery has declined steadily since 1999, when the landmark Hanson’s Landing property, then owned by Bill Tuite, was sold and developed.

So it was that shortly thereafter, Maine’s Department of Conservation proposed to build a public landing on a portion of the 1,200 acres the department owns on the west shore of Branch Lake. The DOC recanted, however, when the Branch Pond Association – the lake is commonly called a pond – and the city of Ellsworth, which draws its drinking water from the lake, opposed the landing. Inasmuch as Branch Lake is owned by the state and the landing would have been built on state-owned property, the DOC’s withdrawal was all the more disappointing and disturbing.

Consequently, a group including Greg Burr, a fisheries technician with DIF&W’s Fisheries Region C, outdoors writers, sportsmen, and several Branch Lake camp owners have been meeting in Bangor to organize efforts to build a landing. The subject also was discussed at a Sportsman’s Forum meeting of the Bucks Mills Rod and Gun Club in Bucksport, where it received immediate support. Moreover, while ambling through the aisles of the recent Eastern Maine Sportsman’s Show, I was asked several times if the business about a landing at Branch was real or rumor. Obviously, the reels of optimism are running.

Understandably, the uninitiated will wonder why the issue is raising such a ruckus. The answer is that the city of Ellsworth and the BPA contend that a landing will increase boating activity and elevate risks of milfoil entering the lake, resulting in contamination of the city’s water. It’s interesting, however, that milfoil exists in Lake Auburn, which supplies drinking water to that city and Lewiston. Yet the Auburn Water District doesn’t have a filter system, indicating that in spite of milfoil and a monitored DOC public landing, Lake Auburn’s water quality is high. Sebago Lake, the city of Portland’s water source, also has milfoil, landings galore, and fleets of boats. According to Burr, Branch Lake’s water is very clean. Larry Wilson of the Ellsworth Water Department agrees with Burr’s assessment.

Allowing that I know nothing about milfoil, I spoke with people who were knowledgeable about the plant. Roy Bouchard of the Department of Environmental Protection said milfoil growth was entirely habitat related, depending largely on soft, rich sediments. Relative to large, deep, cold-water lakes like Branch, milfoil might grow in shallow coves with soft sediments and protection from wind, but it wasn’t likely that the plant would flourish “wall-to-wall,” Bouchard said. Furthermore, according to George Powell of the DOC, milfoil requires light, therefore it doesn’t grow at depths of more than 20 feet, give or take.

In a letter to the DOC, Nancy Beardsley, director of the Maine Drinking Water Program, Department of Health and Human Services, stated that the DWP supported a properly constructed public boat landing at Branch Lake, provided it complied with the following measures: “Access around the Ellsworth Water Department intake is restricted. The shorefront is managed by eliminating 40 private ramps. Best Management Practices are followed for road and ramp construction. The physical size of the launch is limited to the minimum size needed for safe launching. Access to the launch is controlled to prevent aquatic invasive infestation. Signage is displayed that indicates Branch Lake is a Public Drinking Water Supply. Ditches are maintained and inspected. Privies are constructed. Parking areas are constructed away from the lake. Shorefront areas are revegetated.” For the record, the DOC’s proposal for a landing included most of those measures plus a wash station, attendants, and night closure.

After mentioning the problems of septic tank seepage – there are 253 homes and 24 camps on Branch Lake – and unregulated private landings, Beardsley’s letter concluded with, “One controlled access point that is properly constructed and maintained, together with a strong watershed control program and protection of the water intake area, will provide far greater water quality protection than currently exists at Branch Lake.”

Nevertheless, the city of Ellsworth has issued an ordinance to protect the water quality of the lake. Personally, after reading the ordinance, I wondered about the legality of its many restrictions. George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, expressed the same concern when we talked about the ordinance at the Sportsman’s Show. For instance, floatplanes are prohibited from the lake, ice shacks must have solid floors – no jig holes – and staying overnight in the shacks is not allowed. There are other eyebrow raisers, of course, involving docks, moorings, vehicles, boat engines, and fishing equipment.

The greatest concern by far, though, among people I have talked with who have read the ordinance, is that if it prevails, the precedent it will leave in its wake will promote more negativity toward public access, which generations of Maine’s outdoors-oriented people have enjoyed and appreciated.

Having attended the aforementioned meetings in Bangor, I’ll say the information put forth was interesting. For example, Dale Henderson, a Branch Lake camp owner who has a floatplane, said that during a meeting with city of Ellsworth officials and members of the BPA, a member of the association told him that in arguing against the ordinance, he was making a case for the city to take the lake by eminent domain and have it fenced off. Simply put, that statement was an empty threat in that a municipality can’t take state-owned property by eminent domain. Again, Branch Lake is owned by the state. Eminent domain authorizes government to take private property for the public good, which certainly wouldn’t be the case at Branch Lake. Not in my opinion at least.

Rick Varney, who also owns a floatplane and a camp on Branch Lake, said that in a subsequent meeting with members of the BPA, he was told the lake’s oxygen levels wouldn’t support salmon. Truth is, Branch was one of the state’s most important salmonid fisheries, supporting landlocked salmon, brown trout, and togue. The fishery was so productive that Region C biologists ranked it second only to West Grand Lake in their management priority. Having fished Branch since I was in high school, I remember well the chalkboard at Hanson’s Landing, where fishermen recorded catches of healthy salmon, hefty togue, and big brown trout. Come to think of it, I have a picture of my grandfather holding an 8-pound brown he caught at Branch. It should be mentioned that the lake is also an outstanding smallmouth bass fishery.

All told, it isn’t surprising that sportsmen’s support for a landing is rising like a full-moon tide. Accordingly, the aforementioned state agencies have been contacted, as have legislative representatives and the offices of Gov. John Baldacci and the attorney general. Regarding the legality of the Branch Lake ordinance, Chuck Dow of the AG’s office said he thought it would have to be determined by a court, in which case the AG’s office would advocate for the state’s position.

Unless a compromise can be reached, it appears that the Branch Lake landing issue may be taken to court. However, it wouldn’t be the first time Maine sportsmen closed ranks and marched into legal battles. In the early 1980s, the city of Bangor and Swift River Co., a Boston based hydroelectric development company, proposed to build a generating facility at the site of the old Bangor Waterworks on the Penobscot River. Realizing the facility, including a newly constructed dam, would be a deterrent to the runs of 4,000 salmon returning to the river at that time, sportsmen fought the Battle of the Bangor Dam all the way to Superior Court, and won.

Shortly thereafter, Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. proposed to build a facility at Basin Mills in the Orono area of the Penobscot. Again, sportsmen mustered and fought the Battle of Basin Mills until Bangor Hydro retreated and withdrew the proposal. The most recent, and certainly the shiniest, example of sportsmen’s collective political clout was the defeat of the 2004 bear referendum, the most blatant anti-hunting initiative ever aimed at Maine.

Now comes the Battle of Branch Lake. Of course it will be arduous and expensive, but it appears that sportsmen are again preparing to step to the firing line and defend The Way Life Should Be and always has been hereabouts. Otherwise, the public access that generations of Mainers have taken for granted will move a step closer to being taken for good. There’s no denying we’ve seen the best of it and we’ll have to fight to protect what’s left of it. Set your drags and brace your feet.

Tom Hennessey’s columns and artwork can be accessed on the BDN Internet page at www.bangornews.com. Tom’s e-mail address is: thennessey@bangordailynews.net. Web site address is: www.tomhennessey.com.