09-27-06: Panel working on waterfront access

The News & Observer
Published September 27, 2006
By Jay Price, Staff Writer

Panel working on waterfront access:
A legislative committee looks for ways to preserve the public's access to the coast

A legislative panel started work Tuesday on the question of how to protect public access to North Carolina's coast before it disappears.
It won't be easy: Almost every week another commercial pier, campground, marina or fish house is sold to a residential developer.

Land values on the coast have soared in recent years, making the idea of selling out ever more tempting for people whose businesses may be earning only modest profits.

A News & Observer tally last spring found that more than 34,000 homes in more than 100 subdivisions and condominium projects were planned along the mainland coast, where the state's crab processors and most of its fish houses -- wholesale and retail operations that buy fishermen's catches -- are located.

The legislative panel, called the Waterfront Access Study Committee, was created by the legislature this summer. It has 21 members, including representatives of the commercial and recreational fishing industries, marine trades, environmentalists, state agencies and local governments.

Staff provided by N.C. Sea Grant, a nonprofit organization funded by the federal and state governments, will do much of the work on a report on waterfront access, following the guidance of panel members.

It is racing to pull together a report and recommendations in time for the legislature to consider action next year.

In some ways, committee members said, they would be starting from scratch.

Members said they needed to develop data on topics such as how much development was on the way that would affect access. Also, no one knows how many fish houses there are in North Carolina, let alone how many have closed in recent years.

Committee member Barbara Garrity-Blake, a social scientist from Gloucester, said that she and staff for the Sea Grant program and the state Department of Agriculture are in the middle of a fish house inventory. As they count the businesses, Garrity-Blake said, they are asking the owners about their plans for the future.

The panel is expected to study whether a type of tax break now available for agricultural property could help protect the coast from too much development.

If property owners signed up for the program, their working waterfront would be taxed based on its value for its current use rather than the higher value for development. Owners would be liable for the difference and interest if they sold the property or used it for a purpose that didn't qualify as working waterfront.

Other issues that the panel is expected to study will be planning and zoning measures that would protect waterfront access and ways to generate money and spend it to buy waterfront property or development rights.

Staff writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jprice@newsobserver.com.