MASON TOWNSHIP — Oxford County commissioners and U.S. Forest Service rangers are concerned that plans to resurface a road for logging trucks have hit a major snag.

Cameron Wake and Celina Adams, a husband and wife who live in Kittery, own property through which about 700 feet of the roadway passes.

Since the Forest Service began work on the road in 2009, the couple has insisted it’s not a public road and that their permission is needed for any maintenance on the 700-foot portion passing through their land.

The Oxford County Commission disagreed and granted the Forest Service permission to widen and resurface the road, including the 700 feet that pass through Wake and Adams’ land.

“We had really cordial discussions,” said Katherine Stuart, district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service. “It was a little bit of a surprise when we heard that they were actually considering litigating the county.”

Stuart said Adams and Wake became upset in 2009 when they found the Forest Service had cut trees and shrubbery along the road. Stuart said most of the work needed now is simply flattening the road to make it safe for trucks.

She said the road is in bad shape, with hanging culverts and deep pits due to years of erosion.

Stuart said the Forest Service has made compromises, such as reducing the width from the 14 feet originally planned to 12 feet, which she said is about the width of the road now.

She said the Forest Service bought a section of land out beyond the couple’s land with the understanding that the road was a public way.

“That’s the only motorized access,” Stuart said.

On Jan. 10, the couple’s lawyer, David Soley of Bernstein Shur, sent a letter to the Oxford County Commission stating that they will allow the road to be used as a right of way for logging but “strenuously object” to efforts “to widen this private way, to re-surface the private way, or to cut trees and shrubbery on that portion of the private way which they own.”

The letter says the Forest Service and the county must get the written consent of Wake and Adams before performing any work on the road.

Wake and Adams are arguing that the county has abandoned the road and may never have owned it.

In Maine, if a road passing through someone’s property isn’t maintained for more than 30 years, it’s no longer a public road and becomes the property of the landowners. Because Adams and Wake own land on both sides of the road, they say the road is a right of way but that they own it.

Adams and Wake hired the firm Belding Survey LLC of Harrison to study the road’s history. Surveyor John Belding found no evidence of maintenance work on the road by the county since the 1960s.

However, in the early 1980s, White Mountain National Forest crews repaired the road for a logging operation.

“The argument is that that constitutes county maintenance,” Oxford County Administrator Scott Cole said.

“The maintenance has been of sufficient level that the road remains a public way,” Cole said, adding that it doesn’t matter whether it was the county actually doing the work. If the White Mountain National Forest work is considered maintenance, then it would have been just under 30 years since it was last maintained.

Attorney David Soley said the road was abandoned, despite work done in the ’80s. “The statute shows that any incidental use or maintenance of the road does not terminate abandonment,” he said Wednesday.

“If people want to use the road that goes over their property, they have no problem with that, so long as the use is respectful,” Soley said. He said their objection is to tearing up the road.

According to Soley, Adams and Wake aren’t itching to sue.

“If the county is willing to sit down and work things out with them, it would be their honor to be part of that,” Soley said. “If the county doesn’t want to, then, obviously, there will have to be legal redress.”

[email protected]