Cruisers Net joins Kim Russo and AGLCA in urging you to contact legislators asking for a repeal of HB 201 and for their support of HB 833.

It’s time to send more emails, please!

As we’ve reported Gold Looper and Georgia State Representative, Ron Stephens, has filed a bill (HB 833) to eliminate the problems with the state’s new anchoring regulations.  HB 833 (attached) would, among other things, take away power afforded to DNR during the 2019 legislative session to determine where boaters can anchor. On January 1^st, rules took effect that prohibit anchoring within 1,000-feet of structures such as public and private docks, wharves, bridges, piers and pilings.  HB 833, if it becomes law, lowers that distance to 150-feet.

(See this BoatU.S. press release for a good summary of the issue.)

HB 833 will be heard soon before the Georgia House of Representatives Natural Resources and Environment Committee.  We need as many boaters as possible to email the members of this committee.  Following is a list of those committee members and their email addresses, as well as a sample email you may customize for your use:

House Natural Resources and Environment Committee

Lynn Smith, Chairman- Lynn.Smith@house.ga.gov

Vance Smith, Vice Chairman- Vance.Smith@house.ga.gov

Don Hogan, Secretary- Don.Hogan@house.ga.gov

Timothy Barr, Member- Timothy.Barr@house.ga.gov

Debra Bazemore, Member- Debra.Bazemore@house.ga.gov

Debbie Buckner, Member- Debbie.Buckner@house.ga.gov

Joe Campbell, Member- Joe.Campbell@house.ga.gov

John Corbett, Member- John.Corbett@house.ga.gov

Robert Dickey, Member- Robert.Dickey@house.ga.gov

Karla Drenner, Member- Karla.Drenner@house.ga.gov

Terry England, Member- Terry.England@house.ga.gov

Pat Gardner, Member- Pat.Gardner@house.ga.gov

Sheri Gilligan, Member- Sheri.Gilligan@house.ga.gov

Angelika Kausche, Member- Angelika.Kausche@house.ga.gov

Tom McCall, Member- Tom.McCall@house.ga.gov

Greg Morris, Member- Greg.Morris@house.ga.gov

Randy Nix, Member- Randy.Nix@house.ga.gov

Richard H. Smith, Member- Richard.Smith@house.ga.gov

Jan Tankersley, Member- Jan.Tankersley@house.ga.gov

Kevin Tanner, Member- Kevin.Tanner@house.ga.gov

“Able” Mable Thomas, Member- Mable.Thomas@house.ga.gov

Sam Watson, Member- Sam.Watson@house.ga.gov

Mary Frances Williams, Member- MaryFrances.Williams@house.ga.gov

Noel Williams, Jr., Member- Noel.Williams@house.ga.gov

Sample Email for you to customize:

I urge you to support Georgia House Bill 833, which corrects the unintended consequences of Georgia House Bill 201 passed in 2019.  HB 201’s implementation rules issued by the Department of Natural Resources restrict overnight anchoring within 1,000 feet of any structure, such as public and private docks, wharves, bridges, piers and pilings, except in areas near marinas.  This is an egregious infringement on my ability to enjoy Georgia’s waterways and a failure to honor the public trust doctrine. Further, there is no reasonable safety or waterway-management reason for taking such a significant swath of state waters from the boating public.

Please support HB 833 and work with all stakeholders to protect the public’s right to free navigation.

In addition, HB 833 needs a companion bill in the Senate.  Please email the Georgia Senators that represent the coastal districts and urge them to file a companion bill.  Following is a list those Senators and their email addresses, as well as a sample email you may customize for your use:

Senator Ben Watson, District 1, ben.watson@senate.ga.gov

Senator William T. Ligon, Jr., District 3, william.ligon@senate.ga.gov

Sample Email for you to Customize:

I urge you to file a Senate companion bill to Georgia House Bill 833, which corrects the unintended consequences of Georgia House Bill 201 passed in 2019.  HB 201’s implementation rules issued by the Department of Natural Resources restrict overnight anchoring within 1,000-feet of any structure, such as public and private docks, wharves, bridges, piers and pilings, except in areas near marinas.  This is an egregious infringement on my ability to enjoy Georgia’s waterways and a failure to honor the public trust doctrine. Further, there is no reasonable safety or waterway-management reason for taking such a significant swath of state waters from the boating public.

Please support HB 833 by filing a companion bill in the Senate, and work with all stakeholders to protect the public’s right to free navigation.

Thank you all for your help.  If you’re near Atlanta, or can get there for a hearing, please watch this forum thread.  We’ll be posting soon about when the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee with hear this bill!

-Kim

Kim Russo
Director
America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association

House Bill 833

Ted Arisaka has been very active through Save Georgia’s Anchorages in seeking to repeal Georgia HB 201 which restricts anchoring in Georgia’s coastal waters. See Commentary on GA HB201.

Pre-judged?

So when GA DNR states:

“The intent of the change and enforcement will be to prohibit overnight anchoring in locations that could degrade shellfish production, cause navigation hazards, or create conflicts between waterfront homeowners and the boating public.”

(Ref: https://coastalgadnr.org/new-coastal-boating-laws-take-effect-georgia )

I ask myself, what new education campaigns have been implemented to inform waterfront homeowners of their riparian rights, as well as those of the boaters? What new legislation was introduced to protect boaters from conflicts with waterfront landowners? It seems there is an assumption that the boat owner is always to blame.

Conflicts sometimes arise due to a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of one party or the other, often with an unfortunate injection of poor manners. Here is an example of a 2019 incident between a recreational fisherman and a homeowner which occurred in Florida. WPEC covered this news story:
(Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIn8oln3PeQ )

(Here is the entire footage taken by the fisherman above. Warning: some of the language is R rated)

(Ref: https://youtu.be/ArWqVbu9bNA )

Ironically, the GA DNR AO specifically excludes recreational fisherman in this ban. I say this because if GA DNR believes “distance” is the solution to “conflicts”, why exclude those who are typically going to be close to these “structures”?

“This law change, and the associated administrative order, is not intended to restrict or impact boaters engaged in fishing and other recreational activities in Coastal Georgia.”

(Ref: https://coastalgadnr.org/new-coastal-boating-laws-take-effect-georgia )

 

Some of you reading this may think I am unfairly taking one kid’s side as a cruising boat owner.

I am also a fisherman and enjoy coastal fishing in the lowcountry and do so respectfully of homeowners.

I am also a waterfront property owner. I enjoy seeing the boats passing or anchoring where we can admire them from our home. I expect that they do so respectfully and if there were to be a problem boater I think it would be sensible to deal with that on a case by case basis with laws that already exist.

I don’t think the teacher did a good job this time in deciding which kid to punish. Maybe the teacher already knew which kid was going to be punished before this all started?

Image Source: “Scales of Justice” by Government of Prince Edward Island is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

This is a copy of the letter Jim Healy sent to Georgia legislators concerning the very restrictive anchoring regulations recently passed and enacted. See Call to Action.

Dear Georgia Legislators:

My wife and I have lived full time on our boat for 16 years. We winter in the US Southeast (Georgia, Florida) and summer in the Northeast (Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, New York Canal System, New England). Twice annually we transit Georgia’s magnificent coastal estuarine waters. We thoroughly enjoy anchoring in the peace and quiet of remote Georgia coastal venues. We also stop at many Georgia marinas (Savannah, Thunderbolt, Isle-of-Hope, Skidaway Island, Richmond Hill, Darien, Brunswick) to wait out weather and take advantage of local restaurant and provisioning services. We work hard to comply with all US and Georgia navigation and maritime laws, and we comply with the provisions of the US Clean Waters Act of 1972. We do NOT discharge waste in any waters, at any time, anywhere.

I am writing to request that you support Georgia HB833 on behalf of all Georgians and all Americans. We believe HB833 corrects several serious flaws with its predecessor legislation, HB201, as adopted by the legislature in 2019. If HB201 is not corrected, we will simply not be able to enjoy the beauty of Georgia’s coastal waters as we have previously. Following are the flaws we find with HB201:

1. Georgia estuarine waters overlie Public Trust lands. HB201 has the effect of an “administrative taking” of Public Trust lands; in as much, it disregards and disrespects the Public Trust Doctrine that the Georgia legislature is responsible to protect in the interest of all Georgians and all Americans. This effectively denies the right of navigation and anchorage to all boaters who make every effort to comply with maritime law and regulation.
2. The regulations adopted by Georgia DNR establish a 1000 foot setback from public and private shore-side structures. That setback is grossly excessive and unnecessary. A 1000 foot setback effectively closes many weather-safe anchorages, many located in creeks that are only 500 feet wide from shore to shore. That excessive setback has the effect of transferring control and ownership rights of littoral, submerged, Public Trust lands to wealthy waterfront landowners who have no such rights in law over Public Trust lands. The way the Georgia DNR regulations are written, proliferation of shore-side structures would have the effect of taking proportionally more and more Public Trust lands out of public access and use.
3. There is no demonstrable EVIDENCE of actual violations of the US Clean Waters Act by cruising boats anchored in Georgia’s estuarine waters. Unproved accusation, speculation and innuendo to the contrary by those with personal-interest motives does not justify the taking of these Public Trust lands from public access and use. Publicly available evidence is that under-designed municipal water treatment facilities, poor agricultural practice and failed private septic systems create vastly more fecal coliform pollution than cruising boats could produce even if they all violated existing US law.
4. It is not reasonable to deny anchoring rights to many hundreds of users that are entirely in compliance with US and Georgia navigation and sanitation laws simply because there might be an occasional violator.
5. Enforcement of these excessive DNR regulations is a significant law enforcement staffing and budgetary burden which will lead to spotty, unequal and discriminatory enforcement .

In all of the above areas, legislative controls and agency regulations must target actual violators. I strongly urge that you support the proposed HB833.

Very respectfully,

James B. Healy

Peg and Jim Healy, living aboard Sanctuary
Monk 36 Hull #132

With this Call to Action, BoatUS has taken up the cause of boaters urging the repeal of an extremely restrictive anchoring law recently enacted by the Georgia legislature. See Save Georgia’s Anchorages.

February 6, 2020

Take Action 

Dear BoatU.S. Members:

We need your help to send a message to the state of Georgia regarding a new anchoring regulation that places a significant restriction on your freedom to enjoy the state’s waters. Under a new rule, boats cannot anchor overnight within 1,000 feet of any shore side structure. This rule eliminates a vast portion of Georgia’s coastal waters from a traditional use, effectively taking this shared resource away from many boaters. Please email the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) requesting they repeal this onerous rule and work with the boating community to come up with commonsense anchoring regulations. Click here to send your message: Take Action 

This new rule was created in response to legislation, Georgia House Bill 201, passed early last year with little notice or engagement of the boating community. This legislation directed DNR to establish anchoring regulations, establish anchorage areas and prohibited overnight anchoring of boats outside of these designated anchorages. DNR did engage in a public process to develop these rules  and then finalized them on December 30th of 2019. (You can see BoatU.S. comments here.)

Specifically, the rule restricts overnight anchoring within 1,000 feet of any structure, such as public and private docks, wharves, bridges, piers and pilings, except in areas near marinas. This 1,000-foot offset needlessly eliminates anchorages all over the state. It will affect numerous boaters, many of whom transit Georgia waters as part of the annual migration along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) that brings in millions of dollars to Georgia businesses. There is no reasonable safety or waterway-management reason for taking such a significant swath of state waters from the boating public.

Curiously, DNR did create so-called “Marina Zones” that allow boaters to anchor as close as 300 feet to marinas or facilities that provide fuel, dinghy access, provisions, vessel maintenance or other services, regardless of whether other structures exist nearby. This can only lead to the conclusion that the reason for the greater offset from private structures outside these zones was to provide waterfront landowners with near exclusive use and enjoyment of our shared waterways

BoatU.S. recognizes the need for states to manage their waterways and supports reasonable regulations that protect the public’s access. We also firmly believe the ability to anchor overnight is an important part of how many boater choose to enjoy the water. Please send a message today asking to repeal this rule. Take Action 

Contact BoatU.S. Government Affairs at GovtAffairs@BoatUS.com if you have additional questions.

Thank you for being a BoatU.S. Member!

David B. Kennedy
BoatU.S. Government Affairs
GovtAffairs@BoatUS.com
703-461-2878 x8363
Advocacy.BoatUS.com