Commercial fishing in York continues to have more than its fair share of challenges, as access to the water for fishermen has been limited by residential development here and across Maine. This need prompted a first-of-its-kind partnership to preserve Sewall's dock in York, an effort that is being emulated in other parts of Maine. Pictured here are the boats of Mark Sewall and Jeff Donnell, tied up at the dock after a long day of lobstering, and the bait shack recently built at Sewall's dock.
Photos by Virginia Woodwell
YORK - To fish or lobster commercially in Maine coastal waters, you need more than a boat.
You need a boat and a port and a dock.
You need a boat and a port and a dock and transport to a welcoming market and commodities near to hand like diesel fuel and bait.
You need a boat and a port and a dock and transport to a welcoming market and commodities near to hand like diesel fuel and bait - and electricity and fresh running water, and a handy place to stow your tools and gear and another spot to park your truck and still more space to haul your boat up for repairs.
And you need neighbors accepting of the fact that fishing is dirty, smelly work, and sometimes noisy work, too, at offload or repair times, or when the demands of tides and weather send the sounds of engines drifting across otherwise silent bays at inconvenient hours.
All of these necessities have long been taken for granted as integral to Maine seacoast villages, basic to the fabric of a fishing economy and even critical in appeal as attractions important to the state's tourism economy.
Over the course of the last 20 years or so, however, private demand for waterfront property has sent waterfront real estate prices soaring, putting such properties beyond fishermen's reach. And some of the people who've been able to afford the properties object to fishermen's needs as incompatible with their own as residents. The result has been an erosion of the infrastructure upon which fishermen's livelihoods - and those of all others dependent on deep-water access - depend.
One statistic reveals much: According to a study completed early this year by the Island Institute of Rockland, of Maine's 5,300 miles of coastline, only 20 remain working waterfronts.
Loss of working waterfront is not unique to Maine. It's occurring along all U.S. coasts. Maine, however, has been addressing the problem from several angles for a decade, with the result that the solutions it's coming up with are being emulated elsewhere.
One of the most novel and perhaps far-reaching originated in York four years ago. Then, the York Land Trust stepped in to assist two York lobstermen, Jeff Donnell and Mark Sewall, in the purchase of the dock adjacent to Sewall's Bridge. The York Land Trust did so, first, by negotiating a drop in the asking price - from $800,000 to $710,000 - then paying $410,000 of that lowered price to place a conservation easement on the property. Donnell and Sewall were then able to supply the remaining $300,000 for the purchase with the help of a loan from Coastal Enterprises, Inc., a private, nonprofit, community-development corporation based in Wiscasset, whose stated goal is to "foster the sustainable development of Maine's fisheries and fishing communities by making investments, initiating projects, supporting policies and assisting marine-related enterprises."
Without the purchase, the Sewall's Bridge dock property would almost certainly have been converted to a residence. The conservation easement assures that it will remain a small chunk of working waterfront forever.
What made the arrangement novel was the unusual linkage among the parties involved, the fact that the easement was being applied to a waterfront commercial asset rather than to a parcel of undeveloped land - a new departure for a land trust - and the fact that that act simultaneously restored the docks to constant active use in ownership by two local fishermen. The seller, at the same time, got close to his full asking price.
Joseph C. Donnelly, Jr., of York Harbor, who was instrumental in conceiving and brokering the deal - participating parties initially included, in addition to the York Land Trust, the Maine State Planning Office, the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Old York Historical Society and Coastal Enterprises, Inc. - has joined others in terming the Sewall's Bridge dock arrangement "the first such in the country."
This past May, Donnelly took news of it to Virginia, to a first national conference on "Working Waterways and Waterfronts," and he was joined there by four other representatives from Maine, offering still other solutions for the preservation of working waterfronts. Maine, Donnelly said, is doing more work on that front than any other state.
"Other states," he said, "are looking to us."
The experience Maine can now draw on began a decade ago when a State Planning Office study of sprawl revealed the alarming extent to which Maine's coastal communities could expect to become urban or suburban by the year 2050. In 2001, a legislative task force study revealed that development was already limiting commercial fishermen's access to the shore, and it recommended that more data be collected to address the problem.
The State Planning Office's Coastal Program then commissioned Coastal Enterprises, Inc., the same outfit that negotiated the loan for York lobstermen Sewall and Donnell, to conduct a detailed study of the issue of access in 25 Maine coastal fishing communities. Coastal Enterprises found that limitations on access had become a significant problem in 64 percent of the towns; current access in that year - 2002 - was being provided by a mix of publicly-owned property, 25 percent, and privately-owned property, 75 percent, with 40 percent of that committed to private residences and 35 percent committed to private commercial use, making it clear that remaining access was vulnerable to private whim. Not surprisingly, the study reported, "84 percent of the towns voted for property tax relief as a key strategy for preserving access."
Maine voters have since agreed, and, following a Maine constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters in November 2005, waterfront property tax evaluations are now based on current use rather than on highest possible resale, or residential, values.
In the same year that Coastal Enterprises conducted its study, growing interest in the issue of access led to the formation of the Maine Working Waterfront Coalition. Members are a mix of individuals, state agencies, nonprofit organizations and industry representatives, and their mission is to advocate for legislative solutions to working-waterfront access problems. Members numbered only 10 at the inception; they now number more than 150, and the change in property tax law was one of their first successes.
In keeping with a plan to adopt a multi-pronged approach to the problem, in 2005 the coalition also campaigned successfully for the passage of a $12 million Land for Maine's Future bond initiative, $2 million of which was earmarked to assist fishermen in buying waterfront access. The vehicle for that was - and is - the Working Waterfront Access Pilot Program, which is overseen by the state's Department of Marine Resources. Six Maine waterfront preservation projects - one of which emulated the Sewall's dock agreement in involving a land trust - have resulted, and more are now in the pipeline, the result of the infusion of another $3 million following passage of another Land for Maine's Future bond issue passed by voters just last month.
Meanwhile, this past spring, the Island Institute published the results of a two-year comprehensive project, an offshoot of the 2002 study, mapping waterfront access points and the issues affecting them in 142 Maine coastal towns.
It is that study that reveals that only 20 miles of working waterfront remain in 5,300 miles of coastline.
Back in York, attention continues to be focused on the access problem, with solutions being advanced from more than one angle.
Two years ago, according to York Community Development Director Steve Burns, voters amended town zoning regulations to make commercial fishing a permitted land use in York Harbor. Remarkably, it had been excluded, though the town's Comprehensive Plan clearly indicates support for it. "Zoning," says Burns now, "should not be an obstacle."
Currently, the York Harbor Board is in the process of studying engineering plans for doubling the width and increasing the load-bearing capacity of Town Dock 1, York's only public facility available to commercial fishermen. Town Dock 2, which chiefly serves recreational boaters, is too insubstantial for commercial use and lacks tide depth.
As recently as 20 years ago, said Donnelly, who also serves on the Harbor Board, there were at least two other docks available to fishermen, one with three fuel pumps and a marina; now York's 35 lobster boats, five tuna craft and three trawlers must all vie for space at Town Dock 1, which offers no fuel and no marina facilities, and can handle only one truck at a time. So cramped are local fishermen for space officials are seeking other options to provide access for commercial use.
At Sewall's Bridge Dock, Donnell and Sewall have made major improvements this past summer: they reinforced their pier, increasing its load rating and built a retaining wall to stop erosion; they strengthened and slightly expanded the dock to narrow the gap between pier and floats, and to make working on their boats, grounded at low tide, easier, they're installing booms and an electrical conduit, and they've brought in year-round fresh water.
Most visibly, they built, themselves and over the course of the summer, a bait shack. It's fully refrigerated, will hold slightly more than 100 barrels of bait and is neatly and attractively shingled with red cedar on its roof and bleached shakes on its outer walls.
A justifiably prideful Donnell reports that Sewall calls it, "The fanciest bait shack in the state of Maine."
It may well be.
Of a certainty, it's one of the most significant.
