by Will Gottlieb
Coastal Journal staff

BATH — Bath has always been a wild place, in some ways, but in recent months, it’s just gotten a little too wild for local law enforcement. Reports of coyote sightings within the city are way up over the annual norm, and the nature of the encounters people are reporting are just a little too close for comfort.

“Earlier in the year,” said Lt. Stan Cielinski of the Bath Police Department, “a gentleman who works for [WGME] Channel 13 videotaped a coyote behind Green Acres Apartments in Bath that had caught a groundhog. That was when we first realized, ‘Hey, we’ve got a coyote in town.’ And then we kept getting sightings throughout the summer about it.

by Gina Hamilton
Coastal Journal staff 

BATH — After making emergency preparations, hauling boats out of the water, and bringing in the lawn furniture and umbrellas, Earl turned out to be a minor blip on the midcoast’s radar, literally.

Earl shifted its track about 60 miles to the east of where it was originally expected to be by the time it passed the midcoast area, and so even the beaches themselves saw very little in terms of surf and wind from Earl.  Overnight, rainfall between 2 - 3 inches fell, but there was little high wind, and Earl passed quite harmlessly by.  No damage in the midcoast has been attributed to Earl, and no local deaths, although one sailor in Florida is still missing, and presumed drowned, after the event, another man from Halifax drowned while trying to secure his boat, and a surfer off the coast of New Jersey drowned.

by Gina Hamilton
Coastal Journal staff

BATH — Over 100 citizens attended the gubernatorial debate hosted by the Coastal Journal and the Times-Record on Wednesday, August 25, at City Hall.  While Republican candidate Paul LePage’s staff pleaded a fundraising engagement in Presque Isle, the other four candidates were in attendance, and for two hours answered questions posed by both CJ and TR editors Gina Hamilton and Jim McCarthy, as well as questions submitted by audience members.  Present were Eliot Cutler, Independent; Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Mitchell, Democrat; Shawn Moody, Independent; and Kevin Scott, Independent.

TOPSHAM — The State Fire Marshal's Office says a young Topsham man was arrested last Wednesday night and charged with arson. The arrest was in connection with the Tuesday night fire that destroyed an abandoned apartment house on the Brunswick Naval Air Station Annex.

Fire Marshal Investigators and Topsham Police arrested 21–year–old Robi Saputra, in the parking lot of the Merrymeeting Condos, at about 9:30 p.m. Saputra, who lives at the condominium project, was arrested without incident and taken to the Two Bridges Jail in Wiscasset. Merrymeeting Condos is located a short distance from the base annex. Saputra is also charged with violating his conditions of bail for a prior unrelated drug charge.