Aug. 27, 2008 — While trying to allay residents' concerns about having to leave their boats on short notice in the middle of hurricane season, Planning and Natural Resources officials maintained a hard line Wednesday, saying there's very little wiggle room around laws that prohibit houseboats from mooring in local marine reserves.
Effective Oct. 1, the department will ban liveaboard boats from bays located in the Cas Cay, Mangrove Lagoon, St. James and Compass Point Marine Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary. Since the department is in the beginning stages of its cleanout process, the initial focus is on Christmas Cove (located on Great St. James Island near St. Thomas), Secret Harbor and False Entrance, located in Estate Nadir, according to Roberto Tapia, DPNR's assistant director of environmental enforcement. (See "Liveaboard Boats Getting the Boot from St. Thomas Bays.")
Speaking to a group of about 30 local boaters Wednesday, Tapia explained that laws keeping boats out of the sanctuary have been on the books for more than a decade, but problems with enforcement have made it possible for liveaboards to continue to dock illegally in sanctuary waters. About 95 percent of the boats at False Entrance are not operating in compliance with local mooring laws, and boat owners have continued to install their own moorings without clearing them with the government, he said.
Tapia seemed to be preaching to the choir — the boaters said they supported the department's efforts to beef up enforcement and come up with a water-use plan that would designate where moorings would be set up, who could use them and for how long. However, they urged the department to include them in the process of developing a plan and putting some boater representation on a committee of stakeholders that is being put together in conjunction with the University of the Virgin Islands, the Friends of Christmas Cove and other local groups. Many said they had only been notified of DPNR's plans within the past month, which places them at a disadvantage, since any plans to leave the sanctuary areas must be made during hurricane season.
The sanctuary will continue to be a safe haven for boats during a storm, Tapia assured the crowd. A few liveaboard boats — those that have remained in the sanctuary for decades and were grandfathered in when the mooring laws were implemented — wouldn't be asked to move until the end of hurricane season. It will also be recommended that those boaters be able to return to the sanctuary if the water-use plan is developed and signed into law, Tapia added.
Many boaters' concerns centered on the fact that DPNR could not provide a timeline for how long they would have to stay out of the sanctuary, or how long it would take for the plan to be put in place. At this point in the year, many local marinas are full, leaving residents without a new place to dock, boaters said. Charter yacht owners — whose vessels are booked up until December — are also currently away for the season, hampering their ability to make immediate arrangements or find a place to park between sails, Captain Sharee D. Winslow said.
"Right now is our off season, but we will be coming back into the ports in October," Winslow said. "These boats use everyone of those anchors, but now will no longer be able to get into the ports overnight with guests."
The end result of DPNR's actions will be a possible reduction in tourism dollars coming into the territory and into the businesses, whose owners also live on their boats, she said.
The department will "bend over backwards" for businesses operating out of Secret Harbor, but will not allow them to dock in areas like Christmas Cove for three or four days between sails, Tapia said. But if a water-use plan goes into place, Christmas Cove will most likely be the first candidate for the installation of "what we hope to be" government-owned moorings, since the area "generates a lot" of interest from visitors to the territory, he said.
"We're looking at putting in place an interim plan, until all certain things get finished," Tapia said. "First we're going to try and clean up the area, look at the sea bottom, get with Fish and Wildlife and see how many moorings could be allowed in the sanctuary, and then we could have a better idea of when a timeline could be developed. I'm going to try and get something done as soon as possible, but a lot of boaters are not going to move, so I'm going to have to go down there and physically move them, and that will take some time."
While reiterating their support for the enforcement process, boaters also suggested that the department save time by linking the cleaning up of the sanctuary with the process of developing of the water-use plan. Otherwise, too many issues — such as whether the boats would even be allowed to come back to the sanctuary or how the mooring permits would be issued — are left up in the air, they said.
"We would like to see a rationalized process being implemented," said Jerry Berryhill, who lives with his wife on a boat moored in Crown Bay, later in the meeting. "It's okay to change things as long as we understand what's going on."
The planning process needs to begin with a clean slate, Tapia responded.
"The committee needs to have something to work with, and a clean area to work within," he said. "Because what's going on out there is not acceptable. We have boaters hanging on their moorings for any amount of years, not following the laws, doing what they want to do. But if we clean the area, it's going to speed up the process with the committee and get all these questions answered faster."
In response to Tapia's concerns about waste seeping into the bays from the liveaboard boats, residents said the department should look at putting in place better pump-out facilities. Many also said, however, that they did have marine sanitation devices or holding tanks aboard their vessels, and were being blamed by local resorts for discharge emitted from a few "derelict" boats or the nearby mangroves.
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