I spent eleven years on a harbor commission watching well-meaning development proposals chip away, one parcel at a time, at the working waterfront access that fishing families in my town depend on. None of those proposals were dramatic on their own. That is exactly the problem.
Working waterfront access does not come back once it is gone. A restaurant with a water view can be built almost anywhere. A dock capable of handling commercial fishing gear, connected to deep water, with legal protection from adjacent residential complaints, cannot simply be recreated elsewhere when convenient.
Treat It Like the Scarce Resource It Is
Coastal towns often treat waterfront zoning disputes as isolated local matters, weighed case by case against whatever development proposal happens to be in front of them that year. I think that is backwards. Working waterfront access should be treated the way towns treat drinking water supply or emergency access roads: as finite infrastructure that, once compromised, cannot be easily restored.
That does not mean rejecting all non-marine development near the water. It means being honest that every approval carries a cost that will not show up until the next generation of fishermen finds nowhere left to dock.
