There was quite a bit mentioned currently in regards to the challenges to Maine’s working waterfront. For most individuals, working waterfront conjures up ideas of fishing vessels, hard-working women and men, seagulls and lobster rolls. Whereas it’s true that working waterfront is a part of Maine’s cultural identification, it’s additionally true that this necessary infrastructure is central to Maine’s financial future.
Private and non-private working waterfronts present essential entry to the water and help actions like storing, launching, constructing and repairing boats and loading and unloading catch and equipment. Comprising a mere 20 miles of Maine’s 3,500 mile shoreline, the working waterfront underpins a fishing trade that brings in $1 billion of harvest and creates 1000’s of jobs all through the state, from wharf to plate. And it’s an trade below menace.
The menace is available in a number of kinds, from rising sea ranges that threaten infrastructure, to warming waters that change the sorts of species in our ocean, to rules that shield endangered proper whales, and speedy will increase in demand for coastal properties. These threats put strain on working waterfront companies, and speed up the long-term pattern of changing property that’s an financial lifeline into different noncommercial makes use of.
We now, nonetheless, have some hopeful information. A invoice (L.D. 574) proposed by Rep. Morgan Rielly of Westbrook might broaden protections for working waterfront property by giving land trusts the choice to play a key function in efforts to protect them. This invoice will present one other necessary device in making certain the long-term viability of our working waterfronts.
Presently, the first strategy to protect working waterfront property is the state’s Working Waterfront Entry Safety Program, funded by Land for Maine’s Future and carried out in partnership with the Maine Division of Marine Sources. Since 2008, this essential program has positioned a working waterfront covenant on 34 properties throughout the coast. Nevertheless, the WWAPP is constrained by the supply of public funding and can’t reply in a fast-paced actual property market.
L.D. 574 would breathe new life into efforts to help working waterfronts by making the covenant a extra widespread device. Presently, solely organizations with very particular language of their mission can maintain working waterfront covenants. In actual fact the present legislation is so particular that, except governmental businesses, it hasn’t been utilized. Broadening the definition of entities allowed to carry a working waterfront covenant to incorporate land trusts would considerably broaden the pool of potential companions who can maintain a covenant and supply nice advantages for our coast.
Coastal land trusts like Midcoast Conservancy are pure companions on this work. They’re skilled in bringing companions and assets collectively to preserve locations which have excessive worth to native communities. This expertise is especially necessary in pressing conditions the place a number of events should transfer rapidly to shut a deal. One other advantage of this invoice is that working waterfront homeowners could want partnering with their native land trusts, reasonably than a state company, to carry the event rights for his or her property.
For over 20 years, the Island Institute has been working with coastal communities, fishermen and different involved companions to determine extra options for our working waterfront. That is the place coastal land trusts are essential. Their expertise in utilizing conservation easements for land conservation features in a lot the identical manner as working waterfront covenants – in impact, a authorized partnership that protects public conservation values whereas supporting landowners’ pursuits in working waterfronts.
This framework for conservation has supplied great public advantages to Maine whereas permitting personal landowners to reside, work on, and stay linked to treasured properties. Because the composition of our coastal communities and the standing of our fisheries proceed to alter, passing this laws will likely be important to sustaining Maine’s fishing trade nicely into the longer term.
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