Changes are coming for the Milltown Bridge.  It’s one of three border crossings in the St. Stephen area and five other smaller crossings between Maine and New Brunwick.

Canada Border Services says the Milltown border crossing will no longer be a 24/7 operation starting on Aug. 20, and the service will instead close its gates from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. in the morning.

St. Stephen mayor, Allan MacEachern says the service cut follows other recent cuts made by U.S. customs.

"We're following suit on what's going on, on the American side,” says MacEachern. “We're following their schedule, but I hope this is not the start of another hour change and keep changing to nothing.”

St. Stephen resident, Wayne Spires says if people aren’t using the service then they should expect to lose it. He says he thinks some people will find it hard to adjust to the overnight closure.

"Especially the seniors who say, I've always crossed on the Milltown Bridge. I always will cross on the Milltown Bridge,” Spires says.

Area resident, Andrew Atkinson says the service cut won’t affect too many people. He says most of the town’s people use the St. Stephen border anyway.

"A lot of people just use the St. Stephen border anyways, and as you can see now, there's probably not even a line up on this one.  Plus we have the third bridge up there so I don't think it's going to make much of a difference,” says Atkinson.

For emergencies, in Milltown, the service is used by fire departments from both sides of the town’s river.

Chief Jeff Richardson of the St. Stephen fire department says the service cut raises a concern around response times.

"They will have a supervisor on call, who will be approximately five minutes away, so there is a chance we'll be able to get our people across.  They're not sure whether it's just the truck or our volunteer firefighters as well, because our volunteers respond in their own private vehicles,” Chief Richardson says.

Fire departments on both sides of the border will have three weeks to come up with a new plan for how they are going to get fire trucks and firefighters to the other side of the border, in the event of an overnight emergency.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Mike Cameron.