has been less than pristine, and build 

 better docks. He says he promised 

 local fishermen places at the docks for 

 nominal fees. The fishermen could 

 have one side of the basin, he reasoned, 

 and the pleasure craft the other. An 

 engineer by training, he drafted his 

 first set of plans himself. 



That was three years and more than 

 $150,000 ago. Today, Barnaby has lit- 

 tle more than he began with, except 

 blueprints and some small ball point 

 pens imprinted with the name 

 Mariners Village. 



"We came to a crashing halt last Oc- 

 tober," Barnaby says. "This has been 

 a nightmare. I have spent my retire- 

 ment money, and I've been frustrated 

 in more ways than I can count." 



The story he recounts reads like a 

 badly written Russian novel — a tor- 

 tured plot and too many characters. As 

 staff would come and go in various 

 agencies, he says, new personnel would 

 confront him with new requirements. 

 After two years of drawing plans, 

 meeting with officials and paying con- 

 sultants, survey teams and architects, 

 Barnaby hit a wall. The Office of 

 Coastal Management told him it could 

 not approve his permit, he says, until 

 the N. C. Department of Justice con- 

 firmed his title to the basin. Justice 



decided the pond had, in the past, been 

 navigable, and had been under tidal 

 waters. Justice said the pond was 

 therefore in public trust. 



Barnaby says he hired a survey 

 team whose work, he says, concluded 

 the pond should be his. Armed with 

 petitions signed by local residents and 

 old photographs that he says showed 

 the pond had not been tidal, Barnaby 

 took his case to the state. The Attor- 

 ney General's office stood firm. 



With his money running out and no 

 solution in sight, Barnaby scrapped his 

 marina project and decided to build 

 something more profitable: con- 

 dominiums. He turned the project over 

 to a landscape architecture firm in 

 Raleigh. 



Charles Jones, a field consultant 

 with Coastal Management's office in 

 Morehead City, did much of the field 

 work on Barnaby's project. "I don't 

 think Mr. Barnaby is a good example 

 of how the process works," Jones says. 

 "There were so many problems, so 

 many complications with his site. In 

 the beginning, I think the first people 

 he met with made some suggestions to 

 him, primarily dealing with water 

 quality. I think he construed their 

 suggestions to mean that everybody 

 was approving his project." 



Jones says that even if Barnaby's 

 ownership of the pond had not come 

 into question, there were other 

 problems facing the project. "He 

 wanted to fill in some areas to create a 

 beach, and that amounts to open- 

 water disposal," Jones says. "And, 

 there's a shellfish lease directly in front 

 of his property." 



Jones says that much of the delay in 

 the project was due to frequent revi- 

 sions in Barnaby's plans as new con- 

 sultants took on the projects. 



"With something as complex as this, 

 there are no hard-and-fast guidelines," 

 Jones says. "It's very site-specific, and 

 any change in the plans changes the 

 complexion of the project." 



John Parker, Coastal Management's 

 permit coordinator, says the Barnaby 

 project was delayed some because the 

 plats Barnaby supplied were poorly 

 copied. He says the plans took the 

 same route other such projects do: ten 

 state offices had two weeks each, plus 

 possible extensions, to review and com- 

 ment on the plans. (Those offices are: 

 Coastal Management, Property, 

 Archives and History, Community 

 Assistance, Land Quality, Health Ser- 

 vices, Transportation, Environmental 

 Management, Wildlife Resources and 

 Water Resources. A similar number of 

 federal agencies comment to the U.S. 

 Army Corps of Engineers.) Parker 

 says Barnaby's marina plans ran into 

 trouble because several of the offices 

 had reservations about the project, in- 

 cluding Environmental Management, 

 which did not like the looks of the 

 sewage-disposal plans. 



"If it's a controversial project, it 

 takes longer," Parker says. "Most 

 marina projects can be approved or 

 denied in about sixty-five days." 



For Neil Barnaby, it took three 

 years, and that, he says, is his gripe. 

 "If, three years ago, somebody had 

 told me all the steps I had to take, all I 

 would have to go through, I would 

 have never tried this at all. I would 

 have never spent all that money," he 

 says. 



Anyone thinking of buying coastal 

 property or building a marina can call 

 on one of Coastal Management's field 

 consultants, who will make a site visit 

 and point out potential problems, free 

 of charge. Todd Llewellyn, the 

 agency's information officer, says his 

 office is preparing a publication outlin- 

 ing the steps in the permitting process. 



