Newcastle held a meeting Monday night to give Sherman Marsh residents another chance to hear from the Interagency Review Team that is trying to form a wetland bank for Department of Transportation projects. The easements the DOT wants to place on portions of their properties affect how they could use their land.

The residents turned out. So did the Board of Selectmen, the town administrator, and Sen. Chris Johnson (D-Somerville). Two of the county’s commissioners were there.

But no one from Maine DOT was there to answer their questions. The meeting had been postponed from mid-September to give state officials more notice to attend, but no one attended the meeting.

Selectmen’s Chairman Brian Foote said he would contact all the interested parties about scheduling a meeting anytime between now and the end of the month. “We’ll schedule a meeting at their convenience,” he said.

Residents, who had been hoping for a chance to get answers from the DOT, were frustrated and disappointed.

Resident Marva Nesbit said that during a visit by MDOT the week of Sept. 12, she was told that the easement would extend to the front of her house, and marsh grasses would engulf her tidy front yard. “It was bad enough that they wanted the land all the way to my back porch,” she said. “And now I am being told that maybe they’ll let me mow around my mailbox.”

Residents said they have also been told that they would have to use high grass mowers, to leave marsh grasses several feet high. Justin Woods, who grazes cattle on farmland next to the Nesbit residence, said he is still being told that his land would not be available for that use any longer.

All the residents expressed frustration, saying they are not being given a chance to defend their property.

A letter to selectmen and residents acknowledged that the marshland would be taken, in part, to compensate for the loss of wetland on I-395 in Brewer. Although Deane Van Dusen of MDOT had confirmed that to the Wiscasset Newspaper, the residents and town officials said they had not been told of the plan until the letter was sent this month.

Only a small number of the residents are satisfied with the conditions placed on their properties and the compensation being offered.

Nesbit said that she is an organic gardener and has been a good steward of the marsh. “It’s ironic that the state is trying to protect the marsh from me,” she said.

Nesbit and others said the time had come to consider legal representation against the state and the interagency team, which includes several state and federal agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources, as well as the Maine DOT.

Once appraisals are done, the residents will receive a compensation agreement, and will have 28 days to negotiate, according to the Maine DOT’s letter. If negotiations fail, the state can move to take the land through eminent domain. Calls to Van Dusen were not immediately returned.