Selectmen get first look at harbors plan
BY PETER B. BRACE

"The general feeling of the people
of Nantucket is they're all moving
  in the same direction, and there
seems to be a lot less controversial
      issues than in other towns."
                                            - Dan Hellin,
                                Urban Harbors Institute
                                        Research Associate
Last week, the Board of Selectmen heard about the progress of the Nantucket and Madaket Harbors Action Plan from the Nantucket and Madaket Harbors Plan Review Committee.

Working with the Urban Harbors Institute (UHI), an arm of UMass Boston over the last year, the committee produced the 162-page document, the first draft made available to the board since the harbor planning process got going in summer 2005.

What UHI, which specializes in helping coastal towns in the state write harbor plans, learned from creating Nantucket's is that a strong sense of unity exists among islanders to protect their natural resources.

"I think from my experience, the general feeling of the people of Nantucket is they're all moving in the same direction and there seems to be a lot less controversial issues than in other towns," said UHI Research Associate Dan Hellin. "I think people on the island are much more focused on protecting their town and the habitat and the water quality and everything else."

FOR THEIR EYES ONLY

As the selectmen only received their copies of the harbors plan a week ago at their Nov. 8 meeting, they have had little or no time to comb through it and as a result, could not comment in depth on their impressions of it.

"The biggest thing I see it doing is laying out what we have; it's identifying what we have on Nantucket," said Selectman Brian Chadwick who admitted he had not read very much of the harbors plan yet.

Town Administrator Libby Gibson said she wants the board to have all the time it needs to read the plan and formulate their comments.

"It's more of a policy document and I think the board will be taking a close look at it," said Gibson. "They're going to have some follow-up meetings to get into that level of detail."

After the selectmen and the committee review the plan over the next several weeks, a near-final draft would be written with a public hearing to follow. With the public's comments added in, the committee hopes to submit the plan to the Department of Environmental Protection by the end of December, but Gibson said that filing date may be pushed ahead if the board needs more time.

"If the board feels it hasn't been able to get into all of the details as much as they'd want to, then we'll file it when they're ready," said Gibson who added that the board will most likely keep to the Harbor Plan Committee's schedule so the plan can be filed by Dec. 31.

WATER RULES

Chief among this revision of the original 1993 Nantucket Harbor Action Plan are a proposed downtown waterfront zoning overlay district that would strive to keep water-dependent uses on Nantucket's waterfronts, a fisheries management plan and recommendations to boost public access to all three of Nantucket's harbors, including a public walkway running along Nantucket Harbor.

The plan looks at all elements of and stakeholders involved with the harbors including: + Fishing + Safety + Access + Water quality + Natural resources

+ Tourism

+ Recreational and commercial uses

+ Specific Madaket issues

+ Downtown waterfront.

The proposed overlay district for the latter is likely to be floated in the form of an article at Town Meeting in April 2007. This article could protect the waterfronts from 30-year deed restrictions that are due to expire within the next 11 years. Deed restrictions specify certain prohibited and allowed uses for a given lot at the time the lot is created by the Planning Board. But when they expire, all uses allowed by the zoning district are then instantly permitted on these lots.

Urban Harbors Project Manager Jack Wiggin said he did not know to what extent expiring deed restrictions would impact the island's waterfront around the island, but that Urban Harbors and the committee would be tracking this recommendation as the planning process continues.

HAB?

During their fine-tuning of this harbors plan, the committee also recommended that the Shellfish & Harbor Advisory Board's name be changed to the Harbor Advisory Board. This newly named board would become an appointed board with two marine trades representatives, two commercial fishermen, one member from the Conservation Commission, one member of the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission and one atlarge member.

Hellin said the committee members all agreed with this recommendation despite any waves it might create.

"It's something that may be controversial, but it's quite clear that the committee felt that SHAB has become too focused on the scallops and lost its focus on the harbor," he said.

Some of the more intriguing aspects of this plan include marking storm drains along the waterfront with signs graphically showing people how what they pour into them directly affects marine life in the harbors and oil spill containment stations at docks and piers with 10 or more boats stocked with clean-up supplies that anyone can use to mop up spills of 25 gallons or less.

This version of the harbors plan also recommends raising both jetties to make them more visible for navigation and to increase tidal flow for better circulation, a project Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto is currently working on with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Other recommendations are for the development of a school curriculum for water quality protection and environmental awareness along with one to encourage the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to place a sensor on M/V Eagle to measure water temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll and water clarity. Currently, such a sensor is attached to the M/V Katama, the Steamship Authority's freight boat for Martha's Vineyard, but Wiggin and Hellin could not say when one would be attached to the Eagle.

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