In the past few years, the city of Ellsworth has gone to extraordinary lengths to safeguard the water quality of its municipal water supply, neighboring Branch Pond. It has:

1. Repeatedly pulled out all stops to prevent the state Department of Conservation from constructing a much- needed public boat launch site.

2. Required boaters to submit to an inspection of their boats (for invasive aquatic plants) prior to launch at the less-than-desirable Mill Pond Dam “beach.”

3. Required boaters to purchase a local inspection sticker for a fee. (If they can track down a lake resident who is certified to inspect boats).

4. Passed an ordinance that gives city police, not game wardens, the authority to issues citations for non-compliance, including a fine of $2,500 for boaters caught violating the boat-sticker ordinance.

5. Passed an additional ordinance that prohibits the use of vehicles, including snow sleds and ATVs, on the ice in winter.

Is there something undesirable already in the drinking water? Or has the governance of Ellsworth been taken over by leaders with some kind of hydrophobia? This all adds up to local control gone bonkers.

It is bad enough that a once robust cold-water sport fishery has gone down the tubes thanks to Ellsworth’s regulatory excesses. (It is illegal now for the state to do its customary fish stocking of Branch Pond as long as there is no reasonable public access to the lake by boaters and fishermen).

The snow-sled prohibition ought to be the last straw. Sportsmen should have been shaken from their slumber months ago by the boat-ramp prohibition, but they weren’t. Maybe the snow-sled ban will stir the masses.

Meanwhile, Ellsworth’s rash behavior has caught attention of the state Attorney General’s office, which has advised town officials that its ordinance is just “waiting to be challenged.”

Let us hope.

To a lesser degree, this denial of state-funded public boat ramps on public fishing waters by local camp owners and municipalities is commonplace statewide. And it is having a deleterious impact on some of the state’s game fish waters that cannot, by law, be stocked annually.

To its credit, the Baldacci administration is sponsoring prospective legislation this winter that would allow state agencies to construct water access sites without local town approval. Although the Maine Municipal Association is expected to vigorously oppose this remedial legislation, Maine sportsmen and the state’s fish and game clubs should get behind this battle against this growing and insidious affliction that has come to be called NIMBYism -Not In My Back Yard.

Ellsworth contends that it merely wants to protect its drinking water, which is its right. But throughout the country, water recreation and municipal water supplies are co-existing nicely, thank you. Included among the Ellsworth Branch Pond Nannies is the the Branch Pond (camp owners) Association (BPA), a group that has its own agenda and seems to believe that Branch Pond is its own private domain.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].