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1 week ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
A mysterious disease is spreading quickly among Maine’s beech trees. Called beech leaf disease, it can kill all types of beech trees, or weaken them so that they’re susceptible to other pests. After first being found in the state just four years ago, it is now known to be in every county except Franklin. Maine’s forest service found the disease in 119 new towns last year and 12 more so far in 2025.
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1 week ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
The Trump administration has accused Hancock County officials of defying federal immigration enforcement laws. A list released Thursday doesn’t provide any more details about the accusations against Hancock County, one of three locations in Maine named in the report along with Cumberland County and the city of Portland. Trump issued an executive order on April 28 requiring those jurisdictions to be publicly listed, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security.
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1 week ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
Aaron Ofsiany has been a cyclist for most of his life, doing long distance rides at 6 and racing at 9. Now, after decades of racing and working in almost every aspect of the bike industry in California, he’s going into business for himself for the first time in Blue Hill. Blue Hill Cyclery, a repair and gear shop run out of a converted service van in the family’s driveway at 16 Parker Point Road, opened on Saturday.
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1 week ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
A solar developer may be fined about $180,000 for causing erosion and doing unpermitted work at a 19.32-acre Washington County facility. The Maine Board of Environmental Protection will consider a $180,159 consent agreement with Marshfield Solar LLC and a site contractor at its June 5 meeting. In a memo ahead of the meeting, department staff recommended the board accept the agreement and said the violations have since been corrected.
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1 week ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
Another change is ahead for Bucksport’s restaurant scene, but it will be led by familiar faces. Glenn’s Place, the family restaurant at 214 Route 1, is under contract to the owners of Sweet Cheeks Bakery. The bakery, which started on Verona Island in 2021 and added additional locations in Ellsworth and Holden last year, announced its intent to purchase on Tuesday. Things will remain “business as usual” for the time being, Sweet Cheeks said in a post on Facebook, with a couple exceptions.
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2 weeks ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
A long-awaited restaurant offering Thai food and sushi on Bucksport’s Main Street plans to open Memorial Day. Chalee Thai-Sushi To Go will hold a soft opening on Sunday, May 25 and a grand opening the following day, according to the local restaurateurs behind it. It’s another new restaurant in the heart of Bucksport and a new venture for Chalee Chaikaew and Vee Napapornipat, who run Siam Sky in Blue Hill and had a sister location in Ellsworth for five years that they sold recently.
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2 weeks ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
Orland has a new variety store, and its owners say they’ve been met with a huge amount of enthusiasm — so much, they’re doubling the amount of some foods they carry. Casey Littlefield and her family, who until last month operated Cutterman’s Variety in Stockton Springs, opened Orland Variety in the local community center on May 13.
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2 weeks ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
Two islands in the Bagaduce River were officially renamed earlier this month after a yearslong process to change their racially offensive titles. Now, one of them is for sale. The islands off the Castine shore, called Upper and Lower Negro islands for centuries, received new recommended names from town voters in 2022: Esther and Emanuel, after two of the earliest known enslaved people in the area.
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2 weeks ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
It has rained in Maine at least one day every weekend since the end of March. That’s more than a coincidence. Through April and mid-May, most of the state has seen more precipitation than normal — an entire inch more than in a typical April, according to national data. Some of the higher precipitation totals have happened on weekends, though the state has had its share of rainy weekdays too. Some explanation can be found in weather patterns, according to state climatologist Sean Birkel.
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2 weeks ago | 
bangordailynews.com | Elizabeth Walztoni
Seven years after it was proposed and amid growing doubts about its future, the backers of a land-based fish farm in Bucksport say they are still discussing a project there. Whole Oceans, which initially planned to produce 20 metric tons of Atlantic salmon annually on the site of the town’s former paper mill, let its local building permits expire last year. Since then, there has been skepticism about whether a facility will still be built and if the company will stay in town.
