According to Gouldsboro town manager Brad Vassey, Verizon is considering upgrading the telephone switch in Prospect Harbor to support high speed internet access. If Verizon does make the upgrade, people living within about 3 miles of the Gouldsboro town office would have access to DSL. The 3 mile range would include all of Prospect Harbor, Birch Harbor, and some Corea addresses. Some of Birch Harbor already has DSL access, coming from Winter Harbor.

The DSL connection would provide homes and businesses with a connection to the Internet that is more than 10 times faster than dialup connections. The DSL connection is "always on," which means that you don't need to dial up to connect. Further, it works with your current phone line--so you can talk and be on the Internet at the same time without having to pay for a second line.

The catch is that Verizon is not sure that there is enough interest in the area to bother with the investment. So, Brad Vassey has created a sign-up sheet in the town office to collect names of people who are interested in this kind of service. If you would be interested in DSL, be sure to give the town office a call, or drop by and sign up.

Acadia Partners for Science and Learning, the non-profit organization supporting the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC), has launched a new website that will be of interest to people who like reading the articles on About Schoodic.

The two most important features of the site are the news and the "blog." The news, as you might expect, covers natural resource issues in the Downeast coastal area, with an emphasis on activities taking place at SERC. Acadia Partners advertises the blog as being about "discoveries connections, and new ideas" related to natural resource management.

I need to get a disclaimer out of the way at the outset--I serve on the board of directors of Acadia Partners for Science and Learning. So, I am committed to seeing the organization succeed. What that means is that there is a bias in my writing about Acadia Partners. OK ... now you have the disclaimer.

When the Navy left its base on the Schoodic Peninsula in Winter Harbor, it left a complex of buildings that could have either turned into a liability--if they were just abandoned and left to deteriorate--or an asset for the towns and citizens in this area. With some help from Friends of Acadia, the Park Service was able to secure complete control over the buildings at the site on Schoodic Point. With that control in place, the Park Service did a gutsy thing: It decided to pull together funds from a number of sources, including its own operating budget, and make what will eventually amount to an $11 million investment in the site in order to convert it into the "Schoodic Education and Research Center" (SERC), one of twelve Congressionally funded Research Learning Centers operated by the National Park Service as part of its Natural Resource Challenge program. (Click here for more about the Research Learning Centers.)

The $11 million investment is being used to do things like convert the former Navy Commissary building into a first class meeting facility and to convert the dormitories into lodging facilities that can be used by people attending conferences at the center. This is potentially a big shot in the arm for the local economy. It is the kind of investment in infrastructure that other communities might only dream about.

As long-time readers of About Schoodic know, I have been reporting on the effort to build a town pier in Prospect Harbor since it was just a hopeful idea (Click here for links to more pier stories). Since then, the town has managed to win a highly competitive grant to design and build the pier, has worked with the new owners of the Stinson's cannery to keep the commitment in place to provide land for the pier, has convinced voters to support the project, and has engaged an engineering firm to design it. The expectation was that construction would be underway this summer. As I have written before, this project is a critically important part of the effort to secure long-term public access to the harbor at a time when coastal real estate prices are escalating rapidly.

Woodward & Curran, the engineering firm that is designing the pier, estimated that pier construction would cost about a quarter of a million dollars, an amount that the town has available through a combination of a State grant and matching local funds. This estimate of construction costs was a close match with earlier estimates that the town had received from another engineering firm during the preliminary stages of the project. So Gouldsboro put the project out for bid with the reasonable hope that bids would be at least close to being within the range of what the town has to spend.

As many of you know, the Schoodic Education and Research Center ("SERC" for short) is the Acadia National Park facility located at the site of what used to be the Navy base out at Schoodic Point. Jim McKenna, the Park's Coordinator for SERC, passed the following announcement along.  Sounds interesting ... sign up if you want to attend ...

Resource Acadia Program
A Walk Through Time:  Reading the Cultural Landscape of Acadia

Saturday, May 14th
9:00AM - 12:00 noon
Schoodic District

Join the park’s Cultural Resources Program Manager, Lee Terzis, for a walk and car caravan to learn about the rich spectrum of time and people represented at Acadia’s Schoodic District.  See the broad range of cultural resources preserved within the park’s landscape, from early coastal settlements to historic roads and the legacy of the Navy.  Conclude the morning’s activities with a slide presentation and discussion about how the park protects these special places.

The General Management Plan amendment for the Schoodic District of Acadia National Park charts the course for Park management for the next 20 years. The National Park Service will still be accepting public comment on this plan for the next two weeks.