When word reached residents of Sheepscot Village and the town of Newcastle that the Maine Department of Transportation didn’t have enough information to reopen Wiscasset’s Federal Street to trucks, both decided to do something about it.

Specifically, get more information.

The Newcastle Board of Selectmen agreed Monday, May 12 to have Town Attorney Peter Drum draft a letter to the DOT asking for more information about why the weight limit on Federal Street in Wiscasset is only 6,000 pounds, and how the DOT determines where trucks can and can’t travel.

In the end, it will be up to town attorney Peter Drum to write a letter to DOT requesting more information into the reasoning behind the decision.

“(The DOT's decision) might be challenge-able,” he said.

Sen. Chris Johnson, Somerville, was in attendance during the meeting, and offered his support to the town in its quest to learn about why more wasn't being done at the site.

Johnson said his letter, which would follow Drum's, would serve as reinforcement.

“It would let them know that we're not bluffing,” Johnson said.

Angelo Pappagallo was the driving force behind the petition that secured more than 50 signatures to have the DOT investigate the area in January.

He said the DOT's recent response, which stated that there wasn't enough information to move forward with an action, should have been the jumping-off point, not a dead end.

“There's no baseline,” Pappagallo said. “There's no way to ascertain how many trucks are using Sheepscot Road (instead of trying to pass through Wiscasset). I think that to make a reasonable judgment, they need to collect real data.”

To collect that data the DOT would need to perform a full-fledged traffic study, Pappagallo said, adding that the end goal is simply to allow trucks to travel through Wiscasset and ease some of the Sheepscot Village trucker traffic.

“Until then, there's no way to know unless the traffic study is done,” he said. “Excuse the pun, but we'd just be spinning our wheels.”