Elizabeth Puff and her father Curtis Puff of Townsend, Mass., were wrapping up their first stay at Chewonki Campground in Wiscasset on July 5, when they went kayaking and spotted an eagle. The 9-year-old girl had never seen one in the wild.

Hayley Driscoll, 25, of Dracut, Mass., has been coming to the campground since she was a baby. She plans to continue that yearly tradition.

The combination of new guests who discover the place and those who make it an annual destination has helped the business thrive in the 45 years sisters Pam Brackett and Ann Beck have owned and run it.

These days, however, the campground is facing a situation that Brackett said could threaten its survival, depending on how it all turns out. 

Some of the campground’s trees are sticking into the airspace for the runway at the town-owned Wiscasset Municipal Airport, opposite the campground on Chewonki Neck Road; Brackett and Beck said they are not questioning that there is a safety issue. And they have no interest in blaming anyone for how that came to be.

They said they are just hoping for an outcome that works for everyone, one that doesn’t take the shade and privacy away from as many as 23 of the 47 campsites, and otherwise impact the business. Other trees at risk of removal include ones that contribute to the campground’s setting, including ones along the gateway road that guests drive through to get to campsites; and ones next to the camp store and the recreation hall, Brackett said.

The campground is their livelihood and that of their two daughters, and generates as much as $2 million a year for the local economy, the sisters said.

“To take away up to 23 sites would be devastating to this business and to us financially,” Brackett said.

She sees no way the business could survive the loss of those sites’ use due to the trees’ removal.

Brackett said she would not want to provide the town with an easement to the property; and would not want any campground land taken by imminent domain. “(That) worries us,” she said.

Aside from the income the business provides Brackett and Beck, and the dollars it puts into other businesses where guests go for gas, meals or other spending, the sisters also cited the campground’s importance to their daughters, the next generation that will run it.

“They love it as much as we do, and they’re better at it than we are,” Beck said. “They are looking forward to the future and to raise their families here and we hope that they can.”

“We don’t want to have that taken away from them,” Brackett said. “I think it’s important that young people have an opportunity in Maine ... to have a job, have a business of their own, if that’s what they want.”

On July 22, Wiscasset selectmen are set to discuss the airport’s proposed next, 20-year master plan and an environmental assessment regarding possible work to clear the runway’s airspace.

Brackett said she would like to see the master plan have an amendment that calls for exploring alternatives to taking the trees. Cutting off the tops won’t work, however; that would just kill the trees, she said.

“There has to be a solution,” she said.

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