Bangor to lease dock space to Coast Guard cutter

BANGOR – Though it might sound like a sweetheart deal for the U.S. Coast Guard, local officials think the city actually will come out on top.

During a meeting Tuesday night at City Hall, members of the City Council’s transportation and infrastructure committee authorized a lease agreement that will allow the Coast Guard to dock its ice cutter at the city docks at the Bangor Waterfront for a fee of $1 a year.

The city, however, isn’t looking at the deal as a money-maker but rather as a way to support a key public service.

Besides breaking ice on the Penobscot River in wintertime, Coast Guard crew members provide navigational assistance. They also are authorized to board and search any craft deemed suspicious.

Though commercial ship traffic on the Penobscot isn’t what it used to be, the river will need to be kept clear in the near future, when Cianbro Corp. transforms the former Eastern Fine paper mill into a manufacturing facility for pre-fabricated buildings. The completed building modules will be taken to customers by river barges.

As City Engineer Jim Ring sees it, the agreement will help ensure the Coast Guard continues to ply the icy waters of the Penobscot River during the winter months, a service it considered discontinuing several years ago.

“I think that’s a very, very important service for us,” Ring said, later adding, “I’ve been very receptive to this.”

In recent years, the Coast Guard has tied its cutters up behind Pike Industries, formerly known as Barrett Paving, located near the Veterans Remembrance Bridge.

Ring said, however, the ability to tie up there “might not be available in the future.”

Councilor Peter D’Errico asked if the Coast Guard would station a crew in Bangor.

Ring said that the cutter will be staffed by personnel from the Coast Guard’s Rockland Station, who will be stationed at Bangor on a rotating basis.

The Coast Guard’s cutters break up ice on the Penobscot River up to the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge in Bangor. Its ships can’t be used farther upriver because it is too shallow.