Gloucester Harbor, the center of the city's historic fishing industry, is caught between two levels of government — federal and state — that have drastically different visions of its future.
So it is indeed time to demand a voice for local government, if the city hopes to play a role in controlling its own destiny. Tonight's special workshop, called by Mayor Carolyn Kirk and City Council President Bruce Tobey, is a good start. But, ultimately, they will need state and federal help from their elected representatives — and they need the help of residents, members of the business community and other city officials to reach a consensus on what the city wants for this vital stretch of real estate.
On one side, the federal government — through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — seems bent on diminishing the already depleted fishing fleet even more, to what it deems a "sustainable" level. It still seems bent on using federal grant money that was earmarked for fishermen to buy out many of the boats, rather than to try to help them to stay in business.
That's hardly the only problem, however. On the other side of this equation is a state government that wants to preserve the harbor for commercial fishing only, in the firm belief that the industry will rebound.
This is absurd. The results of such a stalemate are predictable and already apparent. Only about half of the Harbor Cove area is being used for commercial purposes. Some properties — like the infamous, barren, weed-choked lot on Rogers Street known as I-4, C-2 — sit unused entirely.
With days at sea and catches severely limited by the so-called Framework 42 regulations, that will not change anytime soon, if ever. And according to the state, the site can't be developed for any industry other than fishing.
Obviously, Gloucester does not want the fishing industry to die — and if federal officials open their eyes and ears to regulatory reforms proposed by the Northeast Seafood Coalition and others, it won't. The fishing industry has been the city's collective identity and the pillar of its economy for generations — and the harbor has been the central focus of that identity.
Those who know and love the city also know that the use of the harbor to some extent has to change. The city has already signaled its willingness to live with the new reality, with a rewrite of a 1999 harbor plan that was completed in July 2006 and would open the harbor to commercial activity other than fishing.
That plan calls for reducing by about two-thirds the amount of waterfront where only fishing industry uses are permitted. The core of the working waterfront would remain just that, running from the Jodrey Fish Pier to Harbor Loop.
But outside of that — in one section labeled Harbor Cove that runs from Harbor Loop to the Fort and in another that runs from the Jodrey Fish Pier to Smith Cove in East Gloucester — new zoning would relax the restrictions to allow uses ranging from a hotel to restaurants, retail establishments, housing and recreational boating that would be compatible with fishing, but not directly wedded to it.
Since then, two grassroots initiatives — one calling for even more loosening of zoning restrictions and the other proposing public access to the uplands granted by private property owners — are also in the mix.
But any of those changes would require the agreement of the state Office of Coastal Zone Management, which currently will not even consider changes to the Designated Port Area, since its mission is to prevent development in designated port areas that might push out "water-dependent industries."
It would be wonderful if the current draconian regulations led to a real, long-term rebound in fish stocks. But even if fishing makes a comeback, the industry has changed enough so that it will never need the kind of waterfront space now devoted to it.
So local officials, along with harbor property owners and other interested parties, need to agree on what will be the best, most sustainable future for the harbor. They then need to enlist the full support of state Rep. Anthony Verga, D-Gloucester, state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, Congressman John Tierney, D-Salem, and U.S. Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to help them convince regulators that the water-dependent industries in much of the harbor can't be pushed out, because they are already gone and are not coming back.
Local officials know Gloucester cannot remain locked in its past, or it will never prosper in the future.
As they firm up their home-grown plan, those at the state and federal levels must realize it also.
