Cruise Ship Pier House owners Fined $4 Million for Permitting too Many Passengers
The city of Bar Harbor, Maine has fined the proprietor of two main cruise ship piers for $4 million {dollars}.
Native officers are saying that the explanation for the fines is predicated on a coverage that limits the variety of cruise passengers allowed within the area.
The multi-million-dollar nice in opposition to Goden Anchor LC, which owns Bar Harbor’s piers, comes after hundreds of cruise passengers have been allowed off the piers “with out the right permits”, in line with native information reviews.
Golden Anchor has already challenged the choice that upheld the city’s discover of violation in opposition to it earlier in January this yr.
The principles put in place don’t permit greater than 1,000 cruise passengers to disembark on the pier with out going through hefty fines.
In November 2024, Bar Harbor residents handed a land-use ordinance that required pier homeowners to carry permits earlier than permitting passengers to get off the cruise ships.
Golden Anchor has argued that the city of Bar Harbor’s disembarkation ordinance is an unconstitutional overreach that unlawfully infringes on their established property rights and enterprise operations.
In 2024, roughly 98,000 cruise passengers disembarked on the Bar Harbor piers. City officers say they’d been monitoring these numbers from final yr with the code enforcement officer seeing the violations first-hand.
Numbers are anticipated to a lot decrease in 2025, and native residents are combined of their response to the throttling of cruise ship site visitors.
