Now, the courts have added two new 

 steps to the process. Marinas must secure 

 easements to the state land and water 

 they occupy. As a consequence, they are 

 subject to fees on those uses. 



Henderson says the State Property 

 Office will require easements for any 

 proposal that would have more than a 

 minor impact on public trust waters. That 

 means all marinas, he says. 



Traditionally, a marina was auto- 

 matically cleared for construction by the 

 state Department of Administration if it 

 passed muster under the Coastal Area 

 Management Act (CAMA). The Depart- 

 ment of Administration manages all sub- 

 merged lands owned by the state, but it 

 cannot sell them. 



CAMA is administered by the Divi- 

 sion of Coastal Management, a division 

 of the Department of Environment, 

 Health and Natural Resources (DEHNR). 

 Coastal Management measures the ma- 

 rina proposals against standards spelled 

 out in public trust and estuarine waters 

 "areas of environmental concern." 



These standards require, for instance, 

 that developers exhaust options — such 

 as upland basins or dry storage areas — to 

 avoid building in public trust waters. 

 Projects should not obstruct navigation or 

 cause environmental degradation or habi- 

 tat loss. Nor should nonwater-dependent 

 structures, such as restaurants or hotels, 

 be allowed. And docks should be limited 

 to a certain size. 



Easements will introduce 

 a new level of review at the 

 State Property Office — an 

 office within the Department 

 of Administration — once a 

 marina has gotten regulatory 

 clearance from the Division of 

 Coastal Management. 



First, the office must 

 decide if granting an easement 

 would be in the state's best 

 interest. The grounds for this 

 decision are still unclear, 

 Henderson says. 



Next, most marinas will 

 make a review pass before the 

 N.C. Joint Legislative Com- 

 mission on Governmental 

 Operations, a high-powered 



As the trustee of public 



water and land, 

 the state also has the 

 power to grant private 

 uses of these resources. 



Marinas and docks 

 are the most common 



exclusive uses. 

 Less obvious are pound 

 nets, crab pots and gill 

 nets set by fishermen. 



commission seated by the Senate pro 

 tempore, the speaker of the House and 

 other lawmakers. Easement applications 

 for land worth less than $25,000 can skip 

 this step. 



"This interjects a whole new level of 

 review and scrutiny in the easement pro- 

 cess by the legislators," Henderson says. 

 "And how they will look at (proposed 

 projects), I don't know." 



And finally, the applicant must fall 

 into line with other proposed state land 

 transfers to be signed off by the governor 

 and Council of State. 



The entire process will probably take 

 a couple months longer that it does now, 

 Henderson says. 



Public Uses 



Public uses of trust areas — more 

 so than private uses — are regulated by 

 a virtual army of local governments and 

 state agencies. But missing from their 

 ranks are any commanders-in-chief. 

 Agencies and commissions control 

 overlapping uses with little interaction. 



Recreational boaters, for instance, 

 must register their vessels with the 

 Wildlife Resources Commission and 

 abide by the rules of the water, provid- 

 ing lifejackets and honoring no-wake 

 zones. The wildlife division polices 

 inland boaters for safety violations, 

 while the U.S. Coast Guard patrols the 

 coastal area. DEHNR' s Division of 

 Marine Fisheries regulates the catch of 

 commercial and recreational fishermen 

 and moderates squabbles. It has also 

 made rules to keep stopnet fishermen 

 at a distance from commercial piers. 

 Surfers, too, are prevented from hang- 

 ing-ten too close to piers by town and 

 city ordinances. 



As a result of the regulatory anar- 

 chy, conflict resolution is difficult when 

 jet skis run afoul of swimmers or 

 shoreside property owners, or when 

 boaters tangle with fishermen's nets. 



Space allocation — another word 

 for water-use zoning — is one solution 

 for refereeing the clashes on North 

 Carolina's waters, Clark says. Again, 

 like private uses, a wide-angle look at 

 how waters are managed 

 would reduce conflicts. 



The problem, however, 

 is that extending the concept 

 of land-use zoning into the 

 water would require funding 

 that isn't available now, 

 Clark says. □ 



N.C. Sea Grant is plan- 

 ning a conference on public 

 trust issues. For information, 

 contact Walter Clark at Box 

 8605, N.C. State University, 

 Raleigh, NC 27695 or call 

 919/515-2454. To learn 

 more about the public trust 

 doctrine, ask for the Spring/ 

 Summer 1994 issue of 

 Legal Tides. 



Lundie Spence 



18 JULY/AUGUST 1994 



