Maine’s waters are being plagued by ‘floating camps’

A scourge of “floating camps” are overwhelming Maine’s waterways and proving themselves to be a bureaucratic mess to get rid of. 

The buoyant abodes are not houseboats, as they lack motors, putting them into a hard-to-control gray area of the law that has landlubbing homeowners and authorities alike scratching their heads. 

The “floating camps,” as they are known, often are outfitted with second stories, decks and other amenities and while they appear quaint — and may bring their owners a pretty rental income — they pose pollution risks, congest public docks and boat ramps, and block the views of houses on shore, the Bangor Daily News reported. 

For years, a variety of Pine Tree State agencies have realized that the camps were a problem — but as a result of them being not completely onshore and often only tied to land, or anchored to the bottom of a body of water, it is extremely hard to determine which agency has the power to remove them. 

A report by multiple agencies formally recognized “a need to define and regulate these non-water-dependent floating structures in order to protect Maine’s waters” over two years ago. But still the problem persists, significantly due to “the lack of a clear violation of law or regulation for the unauthorized placement” of floating camps.

Indeed, in Maine, the bottoms of lakes and ponds are considered to be under a different jurisdiction than the water itself, and the water’s quality is the responsibility of yet another agency — and that’s just the surface of the bureaucratic mess of regulatory bodies governing the state’s water. 

As a result of this, functionally no group is permitted to remove a floating camp. 

In order to fix the problem, the report proposed, there needs to be an agreement that floating camps should be banned, followed by “a clear prohibition” to allow for such a rule’s enforcement.