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Plenty of input extends the harbor plan comment period The Board of Selectmen were to have held a final public hearing for the 2007 Nantucket and Madaket Harbors Action Plan tonight, but it appears Nantucketers have a great deal more to say about the protection of all things harbor-related than the committee anticipated. At what was to be the last public hearing held by the committee, on Feb. 15, it learned of the breadth of the issues that forced the expansion of the comment period. "We're seeing people mainly saying 'we want more implementation, we want more timelines,' but we don't see anything frightening or drastically misunderstood," said UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station Director Sarah Oktay, a member of the Harbor Plan Advisory Committee. "A lot of it is more ways we can help the town with implementation." Confusion over the intent of a proposed zoning overlay district for the harbors' waterfronts and the selectmen's reasoning behind choosing a state review and permitting process over a local one dominated last Thursday night's discussion, which began with Old North Wharf co-owner Edward Sanford defending Nantucket's tradition of residential uses along its downtown waterfront. Sanford picked apart sections 3.8 and 3.9 of the harbor plan, asking the committee the purpose of excluding residential development from the harbor waterfront and preventing private property owners from building docks and floats for their own use. Citing Articles 25, 26 and 27 on this year's warrant for Town Meeting, which seek to create a harbor overlay zoning district that would, among other things, require residential property owners trying to modify their residential space in the district to provide a public benefit. Sanford worries that 20 to 40 years from now, residential uses will be zoned out of Old North Wharf because the overlay would require uses like public restrooms on private property. Sanford said it sounded a lot like what the state's Chapter 91 Waterways program tries to do on the mainland. "The Town of Nantucket always ran a little bit in a counter direction because there's a tradition of residential development on the waterfront," said Sanford. "It's not something that happened 15, 20 years ago when Nantucket became a fashionable place and it's not mentioned in any of the preambles [of the plan] and it's starting to sound a lot like the state." But as project leader Jack Wiggin, director of the Urban Harbors Institute, the town's harbor planning consultant explained, the overlay would not change existing zoning but instead, would recommend that there be no conversion of commercial uses to residential and that no residential structures are built within 25 feet of the harbor. If the plan is approved by the state's Office of Coastal Zone Management, it would mirror the laws within Chapter 91, but it would not bind Nantucket to them. The town would have the ability to modify its regulations. "All we've done is make the regulations in Nantucket consistent with that," said Wiggin. "The only thing we're trying to do is to make them work together. Again, we're only talking about the first 25 feet of the waterfront." Tuckernuck property owners at the meeting echoed Sanford's concerns about losing the right to build docks and piers on Old North Wharf. Last fall, the Department of Environmental Protection ordered the removal of all docks and piers in the lagoon at the eastern end of Tuckernuck and last week told Marine Superintendent Dave Fronzuto that it is now taking steps to remove these structures. Fronzuto said he told DEP to back off a bit so a legal public pier could be built in time for summer traffic. Tuckernucker Bam LaFarge told the committee that he wants to be included in the planning process and that to date, Tuckernuck feels like it has been left out. "I've been trying to light a fire under Tuckernuckers asses about the harbor plan for months," he said. "They wanted to talk about the DWord. Docks. I think they're going to try to come up with some new language for that for next week." Article 28 on the warrant this year proposes to prohibit all new docks, wharves and piers permanently, except for commercial uses, repairs and replacement to existing ones and piers for public use. "I just ask that we be a part of the process of your planning," said LaFarge, adding that he did not want the entirety of Tuckernuck included in the harbor plan, just East Pond, the Bigelow Point area on North Pond and the lagoon. Along with verbal changes suggested at this meeting, the committee also took in more than 20 written comments dealing with issues such as the Great Harbor Yacht Club, mooring fields, harbor access, a shellfish management plan, dredging the main channel and water quality. I |
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