Our former colleague and now Land Court Judge Robert Foster recently decided Neily v. Gray. That case concerns the rights of various owners in Lydia’s Island Road, a private way in Wareham leading to Onset Bay. Judge Foster determined that different owners had different rights in that way, depending on their chain of title.
In a satisfying win for Rackemann, the Appeals Court today upheld a Land Court decision that inland lot owners hold no easement rights over our clients’ waterfront property.
Loiselle v. Hickey concerns a large subdivision in Dennis with a number of ways leading to Cape Cod Bay. An earlier case between many of the same parties established that the inland lot owners had easement rights in all of those ways. In Loiselle, many of the same the inland lot owners argued that they also had the right to use the private beach between those ways for recreational purposes.
The Appeals Court rejected that claim. While the decision does not break new legal ground, it does serve as a helpful review of the basic legal principles governing waterfront land.
Massachusetts is unusual in that an owner of waterfront property typically holds title to the low water mark. However, the area between the low and the high water marks normally remains subject to the rights of the public to fish, fowl (hunt birds) and navigate.
Continue Reading Private Parties Cannot Enforce Public Rights to Access Tidelands
In the just-decided Maslow v. O’Connor, the Appeals Court addressed rights in a Gloucester subdivision road. Since Gloucester is a seaside community, naturally the case concerns water access.
Continue Reading Can’t Get There From Here?
The Boston Planning and Development Agency recently released the Downtown Waterfront District Municipal Waterfront Plan (the “Waterfront Plan”). While virtually the entire Boston Harbor Waterfront is subject to Chapter 91 jurisdiction, municipalities are allowed to modify Chapter 91 regulations, as recently amended and promulgated by MassDEP, by enacting municipal harbor plans. In return for the
A Cape Cod jury, after a scant one-hour deliberation, decided in favor of a Falmouth landowner who claimed that the Falmouth Conservation Commission’s refusal to grant variances from the Town’s Wetlands Protection Bylaw deprived her of all beneficial use of her ![Ocean front summer vacation rental under a blue sky. Outer Banks. North Carolina. Horizontal]-For more bodies of water images, click here. OCEAN LAKE RIVER and SHORE](https://www.massachusettslandusemonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/367/2017/03/beachfronthome-300x188.jpg)
property. The jury in Smyth v. Falmouth Conservation Commission and the Town of
Yesterday the Appeals Court upheld a variance decision by our former colleague, Land Court Justice Robert Foster. In that case, Furlong v. Zoning Board of Appeals of Salem, Furlong challenged a variance granted to the abutting Brewer Hawthorne Cove Marina in Salem.
The variance permitted the Marina to construct a new building outside of
A Massachusetts appellate court has ruled for the first time that new land which accretes to registered waterfront land is treated as registered land automatically, without the registered landowner filing additional proceedings.
In Brown v. Kalicki, decided earlier this week, neighbors sought to establish an easement by prescription to use for recreational purposes a
If you think land use is simple, read Beverly Port Marina, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Protection — not just the recent Appeals Court decision but the underlying agency decision. What’s so difficult? Begin with a smorgasbord of government laws and programs: Chapter 91, the Coastal Zone Management Plan, procurement law, the urban self-help program, Article 97 of the Massachusetts Constitution. After you’ve had your fill, throw in the dessert: capitalism. At its heart, Beverly Port Marina concerns the extent to which governmental programs (not just one, but many) determine which development proposals stay on the serving table, and which go in the garbage can.
The setting is Glover’s Wharf in Beverly. Glover’s Wharf lies within a Designated Port Area (DPA) established in 1978. It also lies seaward of the historic high water mark. In other words, it’s within the jurisdiction of Chapter 91, the Public Waterfront Act. In 1996, the city, aided by a grant from the Division of Conservation Services (DCS) urban self-help program, bought Glover’s Wharf. The grant required the city to execute a project agreement with DCS. The agreement described the city’s plan to lease a building for use as a restaurant, to maintain public boat slips, and to provide public parking. The agreement acknowledged that the land was subject to Article 97, which requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature before lands acquired for park (or similar) purposes can be put to a different use.
In 2006, the city issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) pursuant to the procurement law, M.G.L. c. 30B. The RFP sought proposals for a 20- to 40-year ground lease to redevelop Glover’s Wharf for restaurant and conservation/recreation uses. The “Black Cow” restaurant chain proposed a 40-year ground lease for a two-story building with a 362-seat restaurant, as well as parking for the restaurant and existing marina slips. It also suggested that the DPA be rescinded. The city went with the Black Cow proposal and, within two years, applied to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for Chapter 91 license. Instead of trying to rescind the DPA, the city proposed water-dependent industrial uses, including commercial passenger vessel service, for the first floor of the proposed building.
In response to the Chapter 91 application, Beverly Port Marina, Inc. (BPM) proposed a “competing project” pursuant to 310 CMR 9.36(5)(a). That regulation prevents DEP from licensing nonwater-dependent or non-industrial uses within a DPA where it determines that the tidelands “are necessary to accommodate a competing party who intends to develop such tidelands” for water-dependent industrial use. The competing party must show that its project promotes water-dependent-industrial use to a greater degree than the project proposed in the license application; must prepare development plans for its project, including a feasibility study; and must offer to purchase title or other rights to the tidelands in question at fair market value. BPM’s proposal was for a 40-year ground lease that would net the city $400,000 over the Black Cow proposal. It would use the land for a boatyard, boat repairs, and recreational uses in the existing building, and would use of the adjacent pier for commercial fishing, a research vessel, and recreational boating.
DEP granted the city a Chapter 91 license for the Black Cow proposal. BPM appealed. On appeal, DEP’s regional office changed its tune in favor of BPM. Nonetheless, DEP’s presiding officer, and ultimately its commissioner, granted the city a license for the Black Cow proposal on grounds that BPM did not show that its proposal was feasible because it did not or could not meet various governmental requirements — namely, it did not show (adequately) that its proposal was allowed under DCS’s project agreement, that the city would lease the land to BPM, or that the project satisfied Article 97. The superior court upheld DEP’s decision. The Appeals Court did not.
In reaching its contrary conclusion, the Appeals Court breathed life into an oft-cited but usually ineffectual principle: although an agency is owed deference, a court must not abdicate its responsibility to determine the meaning of a regulation as a matter of law. The court held that the “competing project” regulation does not require a proponent to establish conclusively that it will obtain all permits and approvals for its project. But the court went one step further. It noted that DEP’s review of a Chapter 91 license application “ought not inquire into the applicant’s acquisition of other permits necessary for the project.” Logically, the same could be said about any review by a permitting agency.
In a free-market economy, government should not determine which projects succeed and which fail. Of course, in some ways government does this all the time. A decision to grant or deny a permit determines if a project succeeds or fails. So do decisions to provide (or not provide) subsidies like tax credits, grants, and so on. But the Beverly Port Marina situation is different. If DEP’s decision were upheld, it would have set a precedent whereby one government agency could base its permitting decision on what it thinks another government agency would do. Whatever deference is owed to an agency, it does not extend to reading tea leaves or divining the meaning of cracks in a tortoise shell. As for Article 97 or any other legislative act, the Fates themselves cannot foretell what the Legislature will do.
Continue Reading Beverly Port Marina and the Fates of Permitting
A recent MassDEP administrative decision, In the Matter of Armstrong (pdf), proves that you can fight City Hall (in this case, MassDEP) and win. However, it also demonstrates the level of effort needed to be victorious. At issue in Armstrong was the accuracy of the 2006 Chapter 91 Mapping 
Project that was performed to establish presumptive