By ALAN CROWELL
Staff Writer Wednesday, May 16, 2007

enlarge Staff photo by David Leaming

ROUGH ROAD: Pete Dostie, owner of North American Outdoor Adventure in The Forks, stands on the Lower Enchanted Road that rafting companies use to get to the Dead River for whitewater trips. Landowners have raised access fees to rafting companies and have closed the road at times.

enlarge Staff photo by David Leaming

DEAD END: Pete Dostie, owner of the North American Outdoor Adventure company in The Forks, walks beside the Dead River staging entry point for whitewater rafters. Dostie and other rafting company owners are concerned about landowners raising access fees to the area.

enlarge Staff photo by David Leaming

ROAD WEARY: Running water and tire tracks have rutted a section of the Lower Enchanted Road that provides access to the Dead River for whitewater rafting companies.

That meant outfitters would not be able to reach the river during one of a handful of spring days when the water released from Flagstaff Lake ensures peak conditions. Rafters would not be able to take the trip for which they had traveled to northern Somerset County.

A company that maintains the road, Sustainable Forest Technologies, said it had little option but to close it after an April snowstorm dumped three feet of snow, making it impassible.

For rafting outfitters, however, who have seen the access fees they pay to reach the Dead River rise as ownership of land in the North Woods has become increasingly fragmented, the road closure seemed ominous.

Higher fees charged by landowners have squeezed margins at a time when rafting companies are already struggling to attract customers to their remote bases.

Last year, the number of commercial rafting trips down the three major whitewater rivers in Maine -- the Kennebec River, the Dead River, and the Penobscot River -- was at the lowest level in about a decade.

"We are just being squeezed from too many different directions. We are pricing ourselves out of the market," said Pete Dostie, of North American Outdoor Adventure, who has been in the rafting industry for 24 years.

Dostie said that two companies that own a portion of the Lower Enchanted Road, which outfitting companies use to access the Dead River, charge outfitters for access. Those fees amount to about $10.50, and the state charges another dollar.

That $11.50 is a lot for rafting companies who have struggled in recent years as demand for rafting trips has been flat or down. Dostie said he pays more than $500 in access fees for a bus of 48 people.

Not only have the fees the rafting companies pay to reach the Dead River increased but at least one of the companies that collect them is now asking outfitters to pay them in advance, a requirement that outfitters find particularly onerous because they have little extra cash in the spring.

Dostie worries that as land continues to change hands at an unprecedented rate in the North Woods, rafters could eventually be shut out, not just from Lower Enchanted but also from the road used to access the Kennebec River as well. Portions of that road are also privately owned.

It is not just rafting outfitters that are worried about access issues, said Dostie, it is the whole outdoors recreation industry.

"When (access) goes we turn in our keys to the bank," he said.

At the root of the problem is the changing ownership of the North Woods.

Land that was once owned by paper companies with long-standing traditions of allowing public access has been sold and in some cases resold to companies that have little history or presence in Maine.

As land in the North Woods continues to be sold off in ever smaller parcels, rafters say they worry that the next time part of the Lower Enchanted Road is sold they may no longer be able to use it at any price.

Suzie Hockmeyer, an owner of Northern Outdoors, said the threat of losing access to the Dead River is real.

"There is no guarantee that if they sell the land we will continue to have access," said Hockmeyer, who has been in the rafting business since 1976.

Hockmeyer said that with the loss of the logging jobs in the region decades ago, most of the families in West Forks, The Forks and Caratunk depend on the recreational industry.

"We are a struggling industry that is a mainstay of the economy up here," she said.

Florida Power and Light, which owns Harris Station on the Kennebec River, the hydroelectric facility where rafters access that river, has been a good partner, said Hockmeyer, charging a relatively small fee and offering a better facility for rafters.

Still, she said, the road used to access Harris Station is owned by several different parties and she worries that at least one of the owners may one day attempt to charge rafters to use the road.

She said rafters want the state to protect public access on both roads.

Patrick K. McGowan, commissioner of the Department of Conservation, said that the rafters' concerns about both the high price of access and the possibility that access will some day be lost are real.

"When you are looking at the big picture, you have seen six million acres in Maine change hands in the last five years," said McGowan.

Fishermen, hikers and sportsmen in general are seeing changes to the traditions and norms that have kept the North Woods open, he said.

McGowan said the current administration has put more land into conservation to protect public access than any other administration in the past 50 years and he said the Lower Enchanted Road is a high priority.

The Department of Conservation is negotiating with the owners, said McGowan, but he said the state has a limited amount of money and a great deal of need for public access.

"We are hopeful. I would not say that we are making a great deal of progress," said McGowan.

Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, a strong supporter of maintaining access to both the Kennebec and the Dead rivers, said the Dead River has "great value both to rafters and other users."

"The long-term answer is to put the thing in some form of public ownership," he said.

One problem is that it is difficult to even know who actually owns the land, said Mills.

Companies like Bayroot LLC are limited partnerships that hold the land for another entity, he said.

"We don't have access to the people who have beneficial ownership," he said. "We have no idea where the money is going."

Tom Colgan, president of Wagner Forest Management, which manages land owned by Bayroot LLC, owner of the eastern half of Lower Enchanted Road, said his company does charge a $3 fee to commercial rafters.

Recreational users do not pay to access the river.

Colgan said that his company's philosophy is that it is appropriate to charge people who use the road for commercial purposes, and he said that precedent was set well before Bayroot bought the property.

He said his company has been in talks with the state for more than a year about the possibility of the state buying an easement on the road, although he said it has been a slow process, at least partly because there are three parties involved.

Colgan said the only time his company closes the road is when conditions are not suitable or safe.

Mark Andrews, property manager for Sustainable Forest Technologies in Stratton, said his company only closed the road this spring because it was impassable.

Andrews said his company had planned to grade the road before the first scheduled release of water on the Dead River but it had not planned on the late snowstorm.

He said Penobscot Forest LLC is the actual owner of the western portion of the road.

Andrews said there are expenses associated with allowing rafters to use the road, including maintaining the road and a river access site and providing rafting companies with a place to park their buses.

He said his company does require some rafting companies to pay in advance for access, but only those who have been late in paying in the past.

Andrews said his company is also willing to talk about the sale of the right-of-way.

"The state did approach us about purchasing the right-of-way. We have talked to them. We have made a proposal and we are waiting to hear back," he said.

Alan Crowell -- 474-9534, Ext. 342

acrowell@centralmaine.com