How many working waterfronts does it take to keep a coast vital? It’s not a riddle or a joke, but rather an important first step.
That’s what a story in the Chesapeake region’s Bay Journal reports. With funding from Virginia’s Sea Grant, NOAA and Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, a pilot program has undertaken an inventory of the working waterfronts in the Choptank River watershed and “found close to 80, a surprisingly large number considering all of the development pressure in the area. Some are boat builders. Others are places “¦ where watermen “¦ can keep their boats for a reasonable fee. Also included “¦ are Maryland’s remaining crab-processing facilities.”
A gathering at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md., explored the findings and possible next steps.
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When an Alaska timber town evolves into something new, a few dead giveaways tell the story. The boatyard overflows, a new harbor immediately fills up, marine-oriented businesses sprout, fish processing plants expand, and the local chatter revolves around a 300-ton vessel hoist arriving from northern Italy,” reports SitNews.us.
The town is Wrangell (pop. 2,300), an island community about 155 miles south of Juneau. Forest products once dominated the economy, but “fishing, seafood processing and maritime industries have all been growing, breathing life and energy into what has been a moribund local economy,” the site reports.
“It’s saved their bacon,” said Juneau seiner Bruce Wallace. “I’d guess about 60 percent of the money coming into Wrangell these days are fish dollars.”
Harbormaster Greg Meissner concurs: “The maritime sector is booming,” noting that “seiners, trollers, gill netters, yachts—all types of working vessels and pleasure crafts dot the waterfront.”
It’s been a slow, but steady transformation, sources quoted in the story say
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Recreation and industrial interests are clashing in Oakland, Calif. The city’s port commissions postponed approval of a negotiated legal settlement “that could open waterfront property for a Major League Baseball stadium,” the Mercury News reports.
The union that represents longshoremen opposes the deal, arguing it would cost the port revenue. “These are bad deals for the city of Oakland. These are bad deals for the waterfront,” said Melvin MacKay a past president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10.
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No waterfront is complete without a battleship, right? So it would seem, given the news that a secret donor has pledged $34 million toward bringing “a deteriorating Spanish-American War battleship to Port Royal” in Beaufort, S.C. The Beaufort Gazette reports the funds would pay to bring the USS Olympia from Philadelphia to be “the centerpiece of a museum.”
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It’s back and better: Business Facilities magazine gave New Orleans its top rating for ports and information technology job centers. “With its proximity to the center of the U.S. via a 14,500-mile inland waterway system, six class one railroads and a nexus of interstate highways, New Orleans is the port of choice for the movement of everything from steel, rubber and manufactured goods to commodities like coffee,” the magazine asserted.
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TV station WTSP in Tampa-St. Petersburg reports the state of Florida has filed suit “against a local property owner, claiming his land—bought and sold in accordance with local laws since 1883—has actually belonged to the state since 1845. The case could set monumental precedent that wouldn’t just affect residents of the city, but property owners statewide.”
The property in question is a dock on St. Petersburg’s Snell Island. The state’s attorney general alleges “the dock was built on navigable waterways, making it sovereign land and state property.” The state seeks to invalidate the owner’s deed.