Four years ago, David Rice, a South Bristol lobsterman, applied for a Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) permit to build a commercial pier on Clark’s Cove. After two years and a string of appeals from neighbors, Rice secured the permit with an unusual condition – he cannot store lobster traps on the pier.
According to a DEP order, lobster trap storage at the site is “an activity that does not meet the definition of ‘water dependent use,'” and the “shading of marine vegetation” as a result of trap storage would result in a “permanent loss of habitat” and “unnecessarily contribute to adverse affects on the coastal wetland…”
“That’s what I built [the pier] for – for trap storage – to have my business there,” Rice said. “All the docks are loaded with traps at this time. That’s what we do with them.”
Rice, 65, a full-time lobsterman for 15 years, fishes the zone maximum of 600 traps.
As for the environmental impact of trap storage – the supposed ill effect of the traps’ shadow on underlying vegetation – “I think it’s baloney,” Rice said. “There’s no damage to seaweed.”
According to the DEP order denying Rice’s appeal of the condition, the Dept. of Marine Resources (DMR), after a July 16, 2007 visit to the site, found that the “shading of marine vegetation” threatens rockweed, “an important plant species that provides habitat and refuge for a number of epiphytes, invertebrates, and juvenile fish.”
Rice has appealed the matter to the Board of Environmental Protection, a nine-member citizen panel. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 6.
Regardless of the outcome, “I’ll never give up,” Rice said. “The DEP, the state of Maine, has better things to do than fight over trap storage.”
“It’s not just me,” Rice said. “If they beat me on this, they’ll have it on every permit they issue.”
Neighbors, including Dirk and Linda Brunner, John Rounds, Athar Carolyn Pavis-Rounds and others, fought the construction of the pier and continue to battle Rice over the issue of trap storage.
According to Dirk Brunner, there’s a “tradition of no lobster trap storage in Clark’s Cove,” despite the presence of “three or four lobstermen” and aquaculture operations. Brunner cited the shading effect of the traps and said Clark’s Cove is “a residential area… not a commercial area.”
Pavis-Rounds, in an e-mail exchange with The Lincoln County News, said the storage issue “has nothing to do with our personal objections or those of any of our neighbors.”
An Aug. 16 letter from Rounds and Pavis-Rounds to DEP Commissioner David Littell, however, struck a decidedly personal tone. “It is a painful reality all year long, both for us and for our tenants, that the alteration of our scenic and recreational environment by [David Rice’s] pier is considerable,” Rounds and Pavis-Rounds wrote.
“The addition of a wall of traps on top of that pier for six months of the year would amplify enormously this destructive aspect and intrusive nature of this pier. To allow such an exception would be to yield to one man’s idea of his ‘convenience’ at the expense of a whole community,” they wrote.
Rice objected to the letter’s inference that the community supports his neighbors. “The whole community is behind me,” he said. “It’s a fishing town.”
“[Pavis-Rounds is] speaking for her, [Rounds] and Brunner,” Rice said. Rounds and Pavis-Rounds are seasonal residents, visiting Clark’s Cove for about six weeks each year and residing in Paris, France the majority of the year, Rice said.
Chester Rice, 73, a South Bristol lobsterman and former member of the Maine House of Representatives, is David Rice’s brother.
“[DEP has] used every excuse in the book to regulate the storage of lobster traps,” Chester Rice. His living room overlooks the Damariscotta River, including his own commercial pier where he maintains a 300-trap operation.
The elder Rice and District 51 Rep. Jon McKane (R-Newcastle) are collaborating on legislation to remove DEP’s authority to regulate trap storage.
Chester Rice objects to the DEP position that trap storage is not water dependent. “What do you do with a lobster trap?” he said. “You put it in the water.”
“We live on the coast on Maine,” Chester Rice said. “Every coastal scene you see has got lobster traps on the dock.”
A member of the South Bristol Board of Selectmen, Chester Rice said he’s pursuing the bill as an individual, not a local official.
“I’m an interested citizen in protecting the livelihood of fishermen along the whole coast of Maine, not just here,” Chester Rice said. His interest, financial and otherwise, in lobstering is longstanding. “I’ve had a lobster license since I was 12 years old,” he said.
During his time as a representative, Chester Rice was the author and sponsor of the bill that reduced the maximum allowable number of traps for a single lobsterman from 5000 to 800.
“I wasn’t very popular with lobster fishermen for a long time,” Chester Rice said. Some initial opponents of the bill “have since come back and said we did the right thing,” he said.
Later, the lobstermen of Zone E, which includes South Bristol, voluntarily lowered their maximum from 800 to 600.
“I’m a pretty environmental guy, too,” Chester Rice said. “I don’t want to hurt the water. I don’t want to hurt the environment.”
Chester Rice believes the legislation may find an ally in Governor-elect Paul LePage. “Governor-elect LePage has said if there’s a rule or regulation that gets in the way of making Maine a business-friendly place we need to look at that,” he said. “It’s certainly not business-friendly when you have to lug 600 traps across a field when you have a dock.”
Chester Rice experienced his own struggles with regulation as the founder and owner of Chester A. Rice Co. For the better part of three decades, he was a prominent local contractor with upwards of 20 employees. State regulations, however, contributed to Rice’s eventual sale of the business.
“It was killing me,” Chester Rice said. “I felt like somebody had a great big vice on my chest.” Following his doctor’s recommendations, he left the business, selling his company to an employee and turning to lobstering.
As recently as four years ago, the decision to issue a permit for the construction of a commercial pier was left to local governments, not the state, Chester Rice said. A lobsterman sent a permit-by-rule application and a $55 fee to the state, but the ultimate decision was left to the local government.
“Local input is much more important on this thing than someone from Augusta telling them where they can build their dock,” Chester Rice said.
At least one other commercial dock owner in South Bristol has been affected by DEP restrictions on trap storage, Chester Rice said.
“We don’t need [DEP] to micromanage where we store lobster traps,” McKane, who is sponsoring the legislation at Chester Rice’s request, said in a Dec. 15 phone interview. “That’s micro-regulation. That’s unnecessary.”
McKane, like the Rice brothers, finds the logic behind the storage condition “ridiculous” and “absurd.”
McKane is well positioned to launch the legislation. A former member of the Marine Resources Committee, he plans to sit on the committee again in the 125th Legislature.
Lobster trap storage on small, commercial docks like Rice’s “is part of Maine,” McKane said. “Lobster traps stored on docks is the way it’s been and the way it’s going to be, I hope.”
If the reaction of Andrew Fisk, Director of the Bureau of Land and Water Quality, is any indication, David Rice may find little resistance as he continues to fight the storage condition.
Lobster trap storage is “not something that we see as a high-priority issue right now,” Fisk said Dec. 21.
DMR – the agency that initially found that trap storage on Rice’s pier would damage or destroy the rockweed below – reversed its position after a second visit to the site.
According to Fisk, DMR officials said “there is not an environmental impact with the traps being on the pier… we can no longer substantiate that.”
The issue of water dependence remains. A lobster trap, in storage, “is not water dependent in and of itself,” Fisk said. “If you have an alternative, you have to use it.”
Nevertheless, Fisk admits David Rice is “making a reasonable case” and, while DEP has no official position on potential legislation, Fisk said he’d conferred with McKane on the issue.
“The legislature needs to have this conversation,” Fisk said. “That’s something for the next administration to decide.”