Among the noise and tumult of the November election, Maine voters will be asked to approve referendum question number 3, a bond measure totaling $9,750,000 to support conservation of Maine’s open spaces, farmlands and commercial waterfront properties. This will be the third time since 2005 that bond funds would refresh the coffers of the Land for Maine’s Future program and its popular Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program (WWAPP), which would receive $1.7 million of the total bond amount.
The WWAPP originated in the mid-2000s when private organizations, industry associations, marine-related business and individuals came together to form the Working Waterfront Coalition to preserve Maine’s working waterfront. Great stretches of the 3,400 mile shoreline had become the domain of private homes and other uses not dependent of waterfront access. With greater demand for waterfront property came a commensurate increase in the valuation of the land, leaving many commercial working waterfront businesses such as boatyards and lobster wharves reeling as their yearly tax bills leapt ever higher.
“By 2003 and 2004, studies by the Island Institute and Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI) highlighted the problem,” said Richard Clime, WWAPP administrator for CEI. A 2004 study commissioned by the Working Waterfront Coalition by Professor Charles Colgan of the University of Southern Maine Muskie School of Public Service, pinpointed national economic factors for the push to conversion. “Although oceanfront property in Maine is generally the most expensive real estate in the state, a steady and high level of pressure for development of residential property on the shoreline has been driven in the past few years by historically low interest rates and a “flight to land” for money taken out of the stock market during the historic boom of the late 1990s,” Colgan wrote in his report[PM1] .
According to the Island Institute’s report The Last 20 Miles, published in 2007, of the thousands of miles of coast in the state, a mere 20 miles remain as working waterfront, less than four percent of the total. Those 20 miles are not only the basis for Maine’s lucrative lobster industry and other commercial fisheries but also for hundreds of ancillary businesses connected to the state’s many marine enterprises providing considerable economic benefit to the state.
Many of the state’s fishermen and lobstermen, however, access their boats, wharfs and equipment across private property. Seventy percent of commercial fishing access in the state is across private land. Those properties can be sold and converted to other uses incompatible with commercial fishing. Should that happen, providing the facilities for the state’s fishing industries would become a public issue. “It should also be pointed out that the facilities provided to the commercial fishing industry could, if substantially lost, raise the possibility that the public would be forced to invest in additional facilities to replace those lost,” Colgan stated.
So what to do? Given the high value of waterfront land, it seemed improbable that commercial land could be purchased outright, by either the state or private entities such as Maine Coast Heritage Trust. The Working Waterfront Coalition was formed with the intent to find ways collectively to preserve strategic working waterfront properties. The coalition urged state legislators to recognize the value of Maine’s working waterfront and its long-term preservation.
The 2005 election saw passage of a bond that provided the first $2 million for the WWAPP. The program was housed within the Land for Maine’s Future program at the State Planning Office. The bill creating the program called for it to be run jointly by the Land for Maine’s Future board and the Department of Marine Resources (DMR). The Island Institute and CEI were contracted by the DMR to manage the program logistics; CEI is now the sole program coordinator.
The goal of the WWAPP is to provide matching funds to help businesses, co-ops, municipalities and other entities secure important working waterfront properties. Funds can be used to purchase access easements, rights of way, or development rights on properties entirely dedicated to commercial fisheries uses. Mixed use properties can also be considered as long as there is commercial fishing access associated with the property.
In 2007 voters approved an additional $3 million for the WWAPP. Proprietors of fishermen’s wharves and lobster co-ops were filling out the complicated forms, getting real estate appraisals done, clearing titles, and finding themselves with high out-of-pocket costs to do so. Worried that up-front costs might keep some property owners from applying to the program, the Island Institute stepped forward. “We found private foundation funds to fill in the gaps in the program, such as appraisal costs and other items,” Litteral explained.
To date, nineteen working waterfront properties have been permanently protected belonging to eight fishing co-ops, three fishing families, three private buying stations, three non-profit public trusts and two municipalities. These properties serve 770 fishing vessels and 970 fishermen, according to statistics kept by CEI. The funds are used to purchase development rights through the sale of a “working waterfront covenant” held by the state. The covenant protects all current and future fisheries-related uses of the land by specifically prohibiting all non-fisheries activities. The property owner retains all other rights of ownership and management. If and when the owner chooses to sell the property, the state has ‘right of first refusal.’ This is to ensure that the sale value of the land will be its working waterfront value and thus remain affordable to potential buyers who want to use it for working waterfront purposes.
“The program has been widely supported,” Clime commented. “There’s really been no backlash from the communities. Occasionally someone might grumble about an unfair competitive advantage when there are multiple wharves in a harbor and one gets funded. But that’s been rare.” The program is open to those any waterfront property owner interested in preserving the land as working waterfront in perpetuity.
Despite the downturn in the national economy, the pressure to convert working waterfront property to other uses remains high, according to Jennifer Litteral, policy director at the Island Institute. “There are more fishermen looking to sell to get out from under their debts,” she commented. “The current use taxation has helped but it is not stemming the tide of conversion.” The Island Institute and CEI have identified one hundred critical waterfront properties, from Calais to Kittery, that need to be protected in the future to maintain adequate working access. “There are different economic stresses in the state now to be sure,” Clime added. “This bond really is about saving or producing jobs.”
Melissa Waterman is the outreach coordinator for the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.