AUGUSTA – Hoping to end years of wrangling over the true nature of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, a legislative committee Friday unanimously endorsed a proposal to form a committee to study the river’s management philosophy.

By the end of the year, that panel should determine whether the 92-mile waterway should be remote and used primarily for long canoe trips, or whether it should remain easily accessible to those who live in the area and want to fish and gather fiddleheads there.

The debate over whether the Allagash is a wilderness area or a backyard playground has gone on since the waterway was designated as a national wild and scenic river in 1970. It has become increasingly vociferous in recent years as a new management plan for the waterway was developed in 1998 and a longtime manager was fired in 1999.

Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, co-chair of the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee, said the group felt it was time to seek “a meeting of the minds” on how best to manage the Allagash. He said locking people in a room to talk about the issue could help to resolve the long-standing dispute.

If the full Legislature approves the study panel, it will include lawmakers, representatives of the Maine Department of Conservation and Land Use Regulation Commission, the National Park Service and landowners, sportsmen and environmentalists.

Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, who called for the formation of such a committee at a hearing on Thursday, applauded the action.

He initially had submitted a bill that would have taken the river away from LURC oversight and formed a new advisory committee made up of only northern Maine residents.

His bill also would have written into state law that seven vehicular access points to the river remain open. Many environmentalists contend that the national Wild and Scenic Rivers Act allows for only two access points.

At a hearing Thursday before the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee, only two representatives of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine spoke in favor of Martin’s bill. More than a dozen guides, camp owners and representatives of environmental groups opposed it.

At the start of the hearing, Martin withdrew the bill in favor of the study committee.

“The question is how to preserve the waterway,” Martin said Friday after hearing of the committee’s vote.

The problem, he said, is that people, especially guides and southern Maine residents, have a vision of the waterway that is not realistic. The Allagash, which is in the middle of a working forest, is not wilderness, he said. But if the study committee decides it should be made more remote, it must determine how much that will cost, he said.

As he always has, Martin, whose Senate districts includes much of the waterway, said it needs to be available to those who live in northern Maine and want to use the river for just a day.

Cathy Johnson of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the state’s largest environmental group, said her organization looks forward to the state bringing its management plan for the Allagash into compliance with the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The Allagash was the first state-managed waterway to be designated as “wild” under the act.

According to the National Park Service, a wild river is “generally inaccessible except by trail.”

The state has not fulfilled this standard because it has allowed 14 vehicular access points on the waterway, Johnson said.