prospective waterfront development to 

 the Division of Coastal Management. 

 Yet, by early February, they had not 

 applied. 



Plans are under way for construction 

 in the South Water Street district, Merritt 

 says. The city of Wilmington is preparing 

 an overall plan for the district — 

 including the riverwalk, shops and 

 restaurants — that is expected to be 



Merritt surveys the Wilmington waterfront from his building 



presented to the Division of Coastal 

 Management early this year. 



"The funny part about it is that 

 you're not talking about very much land," 

 Merritt says, referring to proposed South 

 Water Street development. "You're 

 probably talking about a maximum of 

 four to five buildings, but you would 

 think we were trying to build the 



Brooklyn Bridge." 



Once complete, the development 

 will give the public something it hasn't 

 had before, says Wilmington Assistant 

 City Manager Michael Hargett. 



"The land is in private hands, so 

 through this cooperative effort, the public 

 would be afforded contact with the river 

 in an area with high demand for pedes- 

 trian access to the water." 



Even environ- 

 mentalists agree that 

 the Wilmington 

 developers' plan is 

 not a threat to the 

 environment. 



Pricey Taylor, 

 a member of the 

 Coastal Resources 

 Commission, the 

 policy-making arm 

 of the Division of 

 Coastal Management, 

 describes the 

 Wilmington plan as a 

 good one, designed to 

 revitalize an aban- 

 doned waterfront. 

 However, she says, 

 the stage is now set 

 for environmental 

 abuse under the new 

 law. 



"Part of the 

 way the law reads 

 (is that) the cities and 

 local government 

 agencies can deter- 

 mine environmental 

 impact of the 

 proposed develop- 

 ment," she says. 

 "It's scary to think 

 the local government 

 is going to decide if 

 a proposed develop- 

 ment has an environmental impact or not, 

 particularly when the alternative is 

 increased tax revenue." 



City officials like Hargett maintain 

 that they will be vigilant. 



"We believe that there are sufficient 

 restrictions to limit the type of develop- 

 ment that occurs," he says. "The city of 

 Wilmington is certainly committed to 



utilizing those provisions to ensure the 

 development is suited to the location." 



The law, in effect, has removed 

 certain projects from CAMA standards 

 designed to protect the environment, says 

 Robin W. Smith, state assistant attorney 

 general and counsel to the Coastal 

 Resources Commission. 



"(The Division of) Coastal Manage- 

 ment has some fairly specific development 

 standards that apply to activities in public 

 trust waters — activities ranging from pier 

 construction to dredging and excavation, 

 and many of those standards, which have 

 been fairly developed over the last 20 

 years, simply cannot be applied." 



It's a concern echoed by the Army 

 Corps of Engineers, the federal regulatory 

 agency that also oversees such develop- 

 ment. Until the law passed, the corps and 

 the Division of Coastal Management 

 jointly issued permits to save time and 

 avoid duplication. With the state agency's 

 hands now tied so that it can no longer 

 reject certain permits, the corps has 

 reverted to issuing its own permits for 

 urban waterfront development and is doing 

 its own environmental assessments, says 

 Wayne Wright, chief of the corps' 

 regulatory division for the Wilmington 

 district. 



"Very frankly, there are not many 

 local governments that are really qualified 

 to evaluate that (environmental impact) 

 adequately, at least for federal purposes," 

 he says. 



Since the 1980s, corps headquarters 

 had encouraged its agencies to rely on a 

 state permit program, when one existed, 

 that would adequately cover the corps' 

 environmental and navigational concerns. 



"This legislation, in this particular 

 instance, forces us to reject that process 

 for this type of development in the future 

 and to require separate permits because 

 the state is no longer able to take care of 

 our concerns," Wright says. 



At the Division of Coastal Manage- 

 ment, Director Roger Schecter points 

 out that the division and the Coastal 

 Resources Commission support the 

 concept of redeveloping waterfronts. 



"Urban waterfront redevelopment 

 has always been a good use of a water- 

 front," he says. "The difficulty has been 



18 SPRING 1998 



