The town of Scarborough has been hit with a $12,000 fine by the federal government for a civil violation of the Endangered Species Act following the July 15 killing of a piping plover on Pine Point Beach.

In response, Town Council Chairman Ron Ahlquist has scheduled an executive session for 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18, just prior to the regular council meeting, to decide on next steps. In the meantime, Town Manager Tom Hall says he will broach “informal discussions” with the feds in hopes of reducing or eliminating the fine.

“Time is short,” said Hall, on Thursday morning. “It remains to be seen what can be done in the intervening days. In a perfect world, I would like to provide the council with some level of assurance that the action they take [on Sept. 18] could have some potential for modifying this notice of violation.”

The town has 45 days to answer the notice. Options laid out by Andrew Tittler, acting assistant regional solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior, include paying the fine, negotiating a settlement, filing a petition for relief, or doing nothing and waiting for judgment.

“The big thing is, if we try and fight this in any way, then we have legal fees on top of everything else,” said Ahlquist.

Tittler’s Sept. 11 Notice of Violation claims the town “did knowingly cause” the plover’s death because its Animal Control Ordinance allows dogs to run off leash on municipal beaches from sunrise until 9 a.m. during the plover nesting season if “under voice control.”

“Voice control over dogs is ineffective,” wrote Tittler, noting that officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked Scarborough to strengthen its leash law three times between May 2001 and April 2004. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife made its own attempt, sending a letter and dispatching an endangered species biologist to address the council in May 2004. State officials tried again to open a dialogue on the issue on July 10, just five days before its fears were realized, wrote Tittler.

Hall and Ahlquist, who in separate interviews both deemed the $12,000 fine “exorbitant,” point out that the town was mulling the issue as early as May, when Ahlquist brought up the need during a free comment portion of a council meeting. However, Hall has also said he did not ask Ordinance Committee Chairman Richard Sullivan to consider a new leash law until after the plover death, when an investigator from the U.S. Wildlife Service appeared in his office, requesting documents for a formal inquiry into what culpability, if any, the town had in the plover death.

“On July 17, a town resident contacted the Maine Game Warden and informed him that she was the owner of the dog that killed the piping plover,” wrote Tittler. “The town resident wrote and signed a statement admitting that her unleashed dog spotted a piping plover, chased it, and killed it, despite her voice commands to the contrary.”

The incident happened at 7 a.m., noted Tittler, a time when Scarborough’s Animal Control Ordinance allows dogs to run free on the beach.

Hall says the town has ruled out taking action against the dog owner, whom he has only referred to as a King Street resident, but whom Tittler named as Rachel Speed. Prosecution by the state, however, remains up in the air.

“I asked the attorney yesterday and he indicated they have not decided if they are taking action against the individual,” said Hall.

Officials on both the state and federal levels have refused to discuss the investigation with the press.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Speed said, “I won’t be granting any interviews until I’ve spoken to my lawyer.”

After the Town Council completes its executive session Wednesday, it will conduct a public hearing and final vote on the ordinance update initiated in the immediate aftermath of the plover death. That update would end the ability of dog owners to let their pets run free at all during the summer. If adopted, dogs would have to be leashed at all times, on lines no longer than 8 feet, from April 1 to Sept. 15.

An ad hoc advocacy group calling itself Dog Owners of Greater Scarborough has vowed to fight the change, either by launching a citizen’s petition to undo the vote, or one to approve an ordinance that maintains the current status quo.

“That’s fine,” said Ahlquist, on Thursday. “I encourage them to do that. I have never backed down from anyone who has threatened us with any kind of neighborhood action. That doesn’t budge me a bit. I like to think in the end we will do the right thing and not be intimidated by that at all.”

In fact, other than a possible amendment for a longer leash length, Ahlquist said he is certain the council will pass the new standard.

“We agree this [ordinance] has to be fixed, I think the whole council is in agreement with that,” said Ahlquist. “Is there a chance it may not pass? No, I would say there is no hope for that at all. I can guarantee that. Take it to the bank.”

“This has been a bit of a bumpy road for us,” said Hall. “It’s taken a number of different turns just [in] the last week with the dredge project.”

An Aug. 20 letter from the Maine Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service caused may local officials, including Hall, to conclude that failure to pass a stronger leash law could imperil a $3.5 million project scheduled to start in November to clear the shipping channel of the Scarborough River. However, endangered species biologist Mark McCollough said at the Sept. 4 Town Council meeting that, at most, his agency would reopen talks with the Army Corps of Engineers and possibly absolve them from responsibility for plover deaths that might occur on Western or Ferry beaches, where material dug up from the river bottom will be used to rebuild sand dunes and create new plover habitats.

“With the issuance of this notice this [fine] has not taken front and center for us,” said Hall, adding that, all along, the hope has been to dodge a federal fine by demonstrating a willingness to adhere to wildlife service guidelines.

Those guidelines also included an option for the town to argue against further restrictions on dogs if it could prove there is an abundance of local habitat set aside for the plovers. That option, however, may be off the table for now, said Hall, as “the clock is ticking.”

“For me, I am totally disappointed that they’ve laid this one on us in the manner they did,” said Ahlquist. “We now want to be certain we show that we get it, that we are involved, but I brought this issue to the council back in May and said we need to deal with it. I’m confident we would have come up with a solution.”

“What’s disappointing about this action, and I may be biased, but I think Scarborough has been a model community in many respects in volunteering and partnering with state and federal agencies in the protection of endangered and threatened species,” said Hall, noting that, above and beyond its animal control ordinance, Scarborough is one of the few beachfront communities in Maine to have a plover protection ordinance. The town has worked continually to set aside conservation land for endangered habitat, he said.

“All those actions don’t seem to count for anything,” said Hall. “I think it sends a terrible message to other communities that aren’t active in that to the level we are.”

On the federal level, the piping plover has been listed as a threatened species since 1985. It is listed as an endangered species by the state, with just 44 nesting pairs observed in Maine this past summer. Biologists from Maine Audubon say there were four nesting pairs found in Scarborough one at Higgins Beach, one at Pine Point, and two at Scarborough Beach State Park.

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