October 1966 



COMMERCIAL FISHERIES REVIEW 



31 



That "development" is going forward rap- 

 idly is a fact we all know. That this develop- 

 ment is beneficial to some individuals is also 

 apparent. The real estate salesman and de- 

 veloper make a short-term profit. The firm 

 that places a factory, a marina, or an oil re- 

 finery on filled estuarine land benefits. And 

 so does the resident homeowner there, or the 

 family with a vacation cottage. But these lat- 

 ter ones who came to the estuaries because 

 they found them attractive, and whose single, 

 filled building lot did no great damage, be- 

 gin to suffer when shoulder-to-shoulder cot- 

 tages form a seaside slum, when the indus- 

 trial complexes pollute the water, and when 

 the accumulated dredging and filling destroys 

 the estuary itself. The costs and benefits of 

 the long-run are quite a different matter from 

 the initial short-term benefit. Only the real 

 estate man and the developer appear to suf- 

 fer no loss as they move from one transac- 

 tion to the next. But the people are begin- 

 ningto appreciate the costs and consequences 

 of unplanned and unregulated development of 

 estuaries. 



Some States Act to Save Estuaries 



Several recent actions by northeastern 

 states are encouraging. You know them bet- 

 ter than I, but I will mention some of them 

 briefly. 



Several towns in Massachusetts have 

 passed laws prohibiting any use of marshland 

 for building sites or other purposes which 

 would destroy its biological and scenic values. 

 The Commonwealth enacted a law in 1963 

 regulating the dredging and filling of certain 

 areas bordering on coastal waters, and in 

 1965 the Coastal Wetlands Preservation Bill 

 was passed in an effort to afford permanent 

 protection to salt marshes. 



New York amended its conservation law 

 in 1959 to provide for state assistance in 

 preserving town and county wetlands, and to 

 give the Conservation Department power to 

 issue permits to dredge and fill in navigable 

 waters, except, unfortunately, for tidal wa- 

 ters of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. 



Fig. 4 - Once a waterfowl marsh, it now is crowded with small homes. 



