GLOUCESTER, Mass. — September 24, 2014 — Monday night’s public hearing on the proposed revisions to the Gloucester’s Harbor Plan featured some of the same critics and criticisms of the substance of the plan and the process the city used to arrive at the current draft.
Waterfront activists Patti Page and Valerie Nelson, as expected, skewered the plan for providing too much regulatory leeway to lend any real protection or spur any legitimate investment in the city’s floundering commercial fishing industry. They also criticized what they termed an exclusionary process that barred any real public input into the plan.
“You’re violating federal law when you only sit down with city officials,” Nelson told the staff members from the state’s Coastal Zone Management office running the hearing. “There is a fundamental schizophrenia in this harbor plan, where the regulatory provisions do not support the achievement of its goals.”
The ranks of the plan’s critics also grew in a meaningful way when two organizations — one of which already wields quite a bit of clout and another that appears poised to become a major waterfront influence — raised objections to some elements in the plan.
In a letter from its President Angela Sanfilippo, the venerable Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association criticized the plan for weakening the Designated Port Area requirements and potentially promoting commercial uses — such as hotels, shopping centers and recreational marinas — that would be incompatible to the survival and potential rebirth of the city’s commercial fishing industry.
“The city’s current proposal includes an unjustified reduction in waterfront industrial acreage, removal of supporting use requirements in the uplands, and a much expanded set of allowable accessory uses,” Sanfilippo wrote. “We oppose these changes.”
Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times