Protect Acadia from Cruise Ships

The Acadia region of Maine is a global jewel of natural beauty, to be shared and enjoyed by all, but is unfortunately being impacted, exploited and degraded by the cruise ship industry and its associates for their private profit and benefit.

While visitation to Acadia has reached levels requiring Acadia National Park to ration access, cruise ships continue to pour floods of people into the small coastal town of Bar Harbor, on some days more than the town's year-round population. The overwhelming and concentrated nature of these crowds has a more negative impact on residents, other visitors and businesses than the regular flow of land-based visitors which by its nature is less concentrated in time and space, stays longer and creates more economic value and personal satisfaction for the town and region. What began as a curiosity with a few ships in the 1990's has blossomed to almost 200 in recent years, with up to three behemoths on some days each carrying thousands of passengers and crew. The industry and its acolytes have infiltrated and influenced town governance to the point where the exploiters think they do, and are entitled to, own the town. If past ownership and profits were allowed to trump all other considerations, the world would not have moved beyond former eras of feudalism, colonialism and slavery.

In response to this years-developing situation, in 2019 the Town of Bar Harbor denied the proposed development of a giant berthing pier for cruise ships. The other three towns on Mount Desert Island banned cruise ship traffic in their ports. Finally this past November (2022), Bar Harbor definitively voted in favor of a citizen-proposed initiative regulating and significantly limiting the number of persons allowed to disembark each day from (even anchored) cruise ships. Regretfully, this Citizen Initiative is not being upheld and enforced by town officials sympathetic and answering to the cruise industry and its benefited supporters, who have now sued in US Federal Court to overturn the Initiative and regain access and control where they are manifestly not wanted. Their goal is to supplant the clearly and democratically expressed will of the people through official inaction, specious legal argumentation and the brute force of money. The citizens of Bar Harbor feel entitled to control and govern their own town independently and with a healthy and welcome tourist industry, rather than being relegated to powerless service employees in a destructive and privately held commercial money machine.

This GoFundMe campaign was instituted to raise funds for legal defense against this lawsuit, and for a vigorous public relations campaign against the industry that, like tobacco, fossil fuels and opioids, pursues its own financial gain in spite of the accompanying human, social, economic and environmental damage to others and our shared commons. Please contribute whatever you can financially, spread the word about this campaign directly and via social media, and be supportive individually by visiting responsibly and declining to patronize the cruise ships, hotel firms and other businesses who operate globally as if their own profit is more important than their negative impacts on others.

Charles Sidman

Citizen and resident of Bar Harbor

Lead petitioner for the recent Citizen Initiative