A COLLAPSED pier gangway can be seen Tuesday from a grassy area at Mitchell Field in Harpswell. Town officials hope to remove the collapsed gangway from Mitchell Field before the Harpswell Festival begins there on July 29.
Town officials hope a collapsed gangway at the Mitchell Field pier can be removed in time for the Harpswell Festival and lobster boat races at the end of this month, but another crumbling pier structure could pose further permitting challenges.
For now, according to Town Administrator Kristi Eiane, the work will focus on removing the collapsed gangway in order to complete most of that project before the July 29 Harpswell Festival and Lobster Boat Races.
Removing the mooring dolphin, a free-standing structure fixed in place by piles driven into the seabed, might pose further permitting challenges that Eiane said could delay or raise the cost of completing the project.
“The town is holding off on that aspect,” Eiane wrote in an email Wednesday to The Times Record. “The proposal for onsite disposal of the cell’s concrete and metal is not being received well by permitting agencies. They prefer to see the material removed off site, adding considerably more cost to the project.”
During a special town meeting in June, voters approved an appropriation of $25,000 for the removal of the fallen gangway and deteriorating mooring dolphin that collapsed this spring.
Prior to the collapse, Harbormaster
Jim Hays told The Times Record, town officials saw no reason to take action on the pier that was previously used to dock Navy fuel-carrying vessels.
In January, a review by engineers with the firm TEC Associates found the pier’s support structure “to be in very poor condition.”
That same report stated that the pier has an “unquantifiable life span before it fails from dead weight.”
In response to that review, town officials closed the pier to all pedestrian uses, but Eiane said the downed gangway raises concern about access to the pier from the water.
The instability of the rest of the pier structure also poses a challenge in the removal of the mooring dolphin as wrecking equipment can’t safely travel onto the pier. A barge and crane must be used to complete the work from the water.
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