Development along 1,000 miles of Maine coastline is now being restricted under new Department of Environmental Protection rules that some landowners say they were never told about and are reducing the value of their property.
The new rules were part of a bill that expanded the reach of the Natural Resources Protection Act passed earlier this year with bipartisan support in the Legislature. The focus then was on the controversy over protecting vernal pools, with virtually no debate over the section that is now protecting the nesting and feeding areas of shorebirds like sandpipers and plovers on tidal mudflats. Scarborough is ranked third in the state among affected communities based on the number of acres that would come under the new rule.
“Nobody got any notice,” said Bill Moore, the co-chairman of the Addison Planning Board and a local real estate broker. “Why not tell people what you’re doing with their property?”
Moore estimates that about 35 percent of Addison is being put under protection by the new rule, and that is cutting land values by up to 50 percent.
Land along much of the Maine coast will be affected, but the uproar so far is in Washington and Hancock Counties, where informational meetings recently were held. Washington County is hardest hit by the rule, with an estimated 395 miles of the county’s coastline affected.
“It’s a pretty easy place to pick on because there’s not that many people,” Moore said. “They’re the same birds as in Damariscotta or in Yarmouth.”
Very preliminary numbers pulled together Tuesday by the DEP based on a request for this story showed the following county estimates for land protected under the rule:
Washington County, with 395 miles or 17.5 percent of the coastline; Cumberland County with 214 miles or 16.7 percent; York County with 83 miles or 13.8 percent; Hancock with 199 miles or 8.8 percent; Sagadahoc with 79 miles or 8.3 percent; Lincoln with 43 miles or 3.5 percent; and, Waldo with 4 miles or 1.4 percent.
Statewide, the total represent 10.5 percent of the Maine coast. Some of the land is on islands and much of it is already protected under other ordinances.
DEP Commissioner David Littell said no attempt was made to hide the shorebird habitat protection.
“We didn’t hear any response from the (Down East) delegation down there or anyone involved with the real estate community,” he said, and there were multiple public hearings.
“We’re willing to sit down and talk about these issues and take them back to the Legislature,” Littell said, but the Down East real estate community “wants the entire rule pulled apart.”
And, that, Littell said, isn’t going to happen while he is commissioner.
The rule, which was passed as emergency legislation and therefore went into effect in June, requires landowners to get a permit from the DEP if they want to build within 250 feet of shorebird nesting, feeding or staging areas. These are areas defined as having a concentration of shorebirds that feed or congregate, particularly during migration. They are generally mud flats at low tide.
Littell said if the lot is big enough, any building would occur beyond the 250-foot limit. If not, it should occur as far back from the protected area as possible.
For protected shorebird land that’s already built upon, landowners can go through a simpler permitting process to put up additional structures like sheds because the habitat already has been invaded, he said. The same is true for owners of a single lot surrounded by development.
Andrew Fisk, director of land and water quality for the DEP, said the whole theory anywhere in natural resource protection is “avoid and minimize,” by keeping any building 250 feet away from the protected habitat, if possible.
“It is not a no-build zone,” he said. “The vast majority of times we make accommodations,” for landowners who can’t meet the rule.
That’s not good enough for Casper Sargent of Sargent Real Estate in Ellsworth
“It’s another example of taking private property rights away with no eminent domain and no reimbursement,” Sargent said. “It’s a huge devaluation of the land.”
Sargent was particularly worried about people he sold lots to since the bill was signed in June. Under existing shoreland zoning, the setback was 100 feet.
“When you start talking a 250-foot setback, you won’t even be able to see the water. You can’t cut trees. If they had publicized it and we lost that would be one thing,” he said. “There was absolutely no publicity on this.”
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