In July 2011, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the town of Frenchboro that it must develop a mooring management plan for the federal navigation channel and federal anchorage in Lunt Harbor.
Nearly a year later, town officials said its harbor ordinance committee expects to have a draft harbor ordinance—which will include a mooring management plan—ready for residents to consider sometime this summer.
“We did form a harbor ordinance committee, and that committee met very regularly in the fall. And then, through the winter, because some of us aren’t here, it was a bit more difficult, although we did continue to meet,” said Pat McEachron, acting chair of the selectboard and the board’s liaison with the committee.
The committee reviewed several ordinances from other towns to get ideas for a blueprint.
“We made a lot of progress, but we decided maybe we’re getting too particular,” McEachron said. “The language was getting in the way of what we wanted to say. So we’ve done a summary outline of what we want the ordinance to reflect.”
The committee has sent the summary to the town’s administrator, Michael Colleran, and will proceed on the basis of his input, she said.
“We’re at the point where it needs to go to a formalized level,” she said.
Initially, she said, the committee expected to have the document ready for the consideration of residents at the annual town meeting on June 25. But it is now expected that the committee will need more time.
“It’s a lot of discussion. There are varying viewpoints,” said the town’s harbormaster, Arthur Fernald.
The issue arose in response to what the Army Corps considers informal and longstanding mooring management practices that ran contrary to federal law.
Jay Clement, a senior project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Maine Project Office in Augusta, met with about two dozen residents last summer to discuss issues related to the management of moorings in Lunt Harbor and to work out an action plan to move Frenchboro from what some residents characterized as informal understandings to a formal management system that complies with federal and state law.
At the time, Clement said the challenges were not unique to Frenchboro. Many harbors along the Maine coast faced similar pressures from the influx of new residents, new uses of shoreside property, and increasing numbers and varieties of boats.
Clement said he first heard about problems with mooring management in 2008, when his office was contacted by a boater.
Since then, he said, he has determined that the town’s informal management strategy runs counter to the corps’ policies and regulations.
Corps permits are required for the installation of any structures—such as moorings, floats, piers, aquaculture operations and pilings—in navigable waters. In Maine, navigable waters consist of tidal waters and certain rivers, he said.
The permitting of structures becomes more stringent, he said, in federal dredge projects such as federal navigation channels and federal anchorages.
Both of those exist in Lunt Harbor. In the 1970s, he said, Congress authorized the corps to establish a 1.5-acre, 6-foot anchorage in the inner harbor, a 30-acre, 10-foot anchorage in the outer harbor, and a 75-foot-wide channel that connects the two. The areas were dredged in the late 1970s.
In keeping with federal policy, he said, the town at the time signed a local agreement to keep the anchorages “open to all on an equal basis,” to establish a town landing and to establish a local governing body that would ensure that the area is administered properly.
“Open to all on equal basis,” Clement said, means that, because the federal project was paid by United States taxpayer dollars, the anchorages and channel may be used on an equal basis by all United States citizens, not just Frenchboro residents.
In addition, he said, the federal project does not allow private commercial uses, such as boatyards or marinas that would charge a fee to moor in an anchorage.
Clement said the problems in Lunt Harbor centered on the rental of moorings and the existence of a work float in the federal project.
Moorings for personal, recreational or fishing boat use don’t require specific corps approval, as long as the town’s harbormaster approves the mooring, he said.
But rental and service moorings and floats within the federal project are illegal unless they have written corps approval, and acquiring corps approval for such a purpose is extremely difficult, he said.
A service mooring is one that is offered by a business—such as a boatyard, marina, restaurant or some other commercial entity—where a service is provided while a boater is at that mooring or, while a boater is at the mooring, he is taking advantage of the service. For example, he said, a shoreside restaurant might provide a mooring so that a boater can go ashore and eat at the restaurant.
Clement said that a harbor ordinance is the vehicle that allows the town to lease mooring space to a boater. When a boater stops using the mooring space, the space becomes available to whoever applies for it next, or whoever is next on the town’s waiting list. Mooring space may be transferred within a family only when it’s a fisherman’s family, and then only to next of kin, such as a daughter or son, but not a cousin or uncle.
All uses of mooring space must obtain approval from the town’s harbormaster, and towns must have a process by which mooring permits will be issued, Clement said.
Fernald said there are currently four people on the waiting list for moorings in the inner harbor. There are about a dozen mooring spaces in the inner harbor and just over 30 in the outer harbor.
”We have a basic harbor ordinance and a navigation safety ordinance that includes a ‘derelict vessel’ section detailing that no one can leave a boat abandoned at the town landing or floats or moorings for more than one week without notifying the harbormaster for positive legal arrangements,” Fernald said.
McEachron said that a fundamental challenge for the community will be the very idea of transitioning to a formalized management plan.
“We haven’t had a mooring ordinance at all,” she said. “We have a basic harbor ordinance, and we were trying to incorporate what we already had into this larger ordinance, although the focus was to do a mooring plan. There have been traditional uses and placements and longstanding family traditions regarding where moorings are and who has them and how it’s determined where they are. And, at the same time, we’re trying to come up with a model that’s fair and speaks to all the issues but also respects what’s gone before. The blending of those two things is what’s taken some time.”
Laurie Schreiber is a freelance contributor living in Bass Harbor