Downeast Institute (DEI), Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, Maine Center for Entrepreneurs, and partners will host “Shell-ebration,” an event focused on emerging opportunities for shellfish aquaculture in Washington County, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 8, at Downeast Institute, 39 Wildflower Lane, in Beals, Maine. The event is free and open to the public and will take place rain or shine.

By Paul Sylvain

After a gloomy week of rain and clouds, followed by more rain and clouds, the sun finally made an appearance just in time for the annual Memorial Day parade in Machias.

And while cheers greeted parade participants from parade-goers lining the route – Machias Memorial High School down Court Street to Free Street, onto Colonial Way before proceeding down Main Street – veterans from American Legion Post 9 in Machias stopped to lay a wreath at the grave of Ephriam H. Johnson, which is who the Machias Legion post is named after.

By Paul Sylvain

Putting a discussion about the Shaddagee Road Bridge under “old business” on the Washington County Commissioners’ May 22 meeting agenda could be seen as an understatement. Just ask Washington County Unorganized Territories Supervisor Heron Weston, who had to claw through 40 years of meeting minutes to ferret out whether the county or property owners are responsible for repairing the bridge.

Nationwide Decline in Opioid Overdoses Tied to Less Lethal Supplies

By Paul Sylvain

Despite a more than 50-year “war on drugs,” the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future’s Opioid Response Director, Gordon Smith, admitted the obvious last week: “We’re never going to stop everybody from using drugs.”

By Nancy Beal

It has been over five years since Kingfish Maine approached the town of Jonesport about building a $100 million land-based fish farm between Route 187 and Chandler Bay on nearly 100 acres north of the town’s largest cemetery. After over a dozen sessions with the town’s planning board and several informational meetings with citizens interested in learning about the various components of the fish-rearing process, in November 2022, the town finally granted the building permit Kingfish sought.

By Paul Sylvain

Maine Drug Enforcement Agency Supervisory Special Agent Chris Thornton opened the May 22 Washington County Commissioners meeting by recognizing the collaborative efforts between the county’s sheriff’s office and his department.

By Will Tuell

On Wednesday, May 21, members of the Machias Ambulance Service attended a ceremony at the State House honoring one of their own. Joe Thompson, an EMT with MAS, was one of nine clinicians around the state to receive Maine EMS’s Excellence Award, MAS Chief Ryan Maker said in a social media post following the ceremony. 

Thompson, noted Maker, “has been an integral part of Washington County's emergency services for over 20 years.” 

By Paul Sylvain

As selectboard meetings go, if you blinked, you might have missed the May 19 meeting in Machiasport. In the span of about 20 minutes, board members Ryan Sprague, Sarah Craighead Dedmon, and Chairman Ryan Maker breezed through the public portion of their meeting faster than an Air Force fighter jet with its afterburners lit.

By Paul Sylvain

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

After attempts in the 129th and 130th Legislature to split a shared District Attorney between Hancock and Washington counties came up painfully short, local lawmakers revived their push to split the district in two again this year, only to see it falter in the Democratically controlled Legislature yet again last week. 

By Paul Sylvain

The Greater Machias area lost a well-known and much-loved career educator and community member with the passing of Bill Prescott Sr. on May 15.

“I lost the love of my life … when Bill passed away,” his wife of 63 years wrote in notifying this reporter of Bill’s death last week. “He was principal at Machias Memorial High School for 13 years,” she said, noting that her husband was the longest-serving principal at MMHS.