Investing in Marblehead Harbor’s future

BY ROB HOWIE

Marblehead Harbor is our town’s greatest asset, a source of pride and enjoyment for everyone and the lifeblood of our local economy. When the muchawaited Marblehead Harbor Plan is presented to the Select Board and the public next month, will we be prepared to implement it? Planning is important, but it’s the execution that counts.

The state’s Seaport Advisory Council funded the first Marblehead Harbor plan in 2009 which examined infrastructure needs, harbor uses and challenges. It detailed:

Addressing environmental and safety concerns

» Improving public access, including ADA compliance

Dredging Little Harbor and rebuilding the public launching ramp there

» Repairing seawalls and piers at State, Cliff and Commercial Streets

» Rehabilitating Crocker Park landing

Promoting commercial fishing

» Improving Parker’s Boatyard with better public access, launch facilities and ADA compliance. It noted that Parker’s is “underutilized … and the best candidate for improvements within the harbor.”

For a variety of reasons — including focus, funding and lack of an implementation capability — the town acted on only a few of these.

The state funded another Marblehead Harbor plan in 2021 (to be released in June). Some 14 years after the first plan, the new one, unsurprisingly, finds the same environmental and safety concerns and carries forward most of the same recommendations, including repairing existing infrastructure, assessing seawalls’ condition, improving public access to the water, promoting commercial fishing, ensuring public safety and more effective use of Parker’s as a community boating center and boat launch facility.

The new plan also recommends adding a second trawl line for Town Class and other small boats, installing electric charging stations accessible to boats in the water and adding kayak storage at Riverhead and Gas House Beaches. It also suggested improving recreational boating facilities and services, including ADA compliance, on the West Shore at Stramski’s and Village Street.

A parallel planning process undertaken in 2022, led by Salem Sound Coastwatch and Woods Hole Group, focused on resiliency to sea level rise and climate change.

Among the most important recommendations of the new harbor plan is forming an implementation working group to turn it into reality in the months and years ahead. This step should be immediately embraced by the Select Board, which is charged with appointing the group and providing a clear mandate and accountability to execute the plan. It should be a collaborative and cooperative effort consisting of representative stakeholders from town boards, non-profit organizations focused on the harbor, commercial fishermen, the recreational boating community and land-side and water-based businesses. This was the model for the Harbor Plan Working Group, which worked well.

The new plan identifies goals, priorities, actions, the responsible parties, timeline and estimated costs. With these in hand, the implementation group can get to work and begin to make things happen. They will be required to submit an annual report to ensure accountability for the steady progress needed to implement the recommended projects. Working with the town Planner and newly-approved Sustainability manager, a key responsibility of the implementation group will be to secure funding, most of which is available through an abundance of federal money earmarked for coastal resiliency projects. More than 20 federal, state and private funding sources for project studies, construction drawings and actual construction have been explicitly identified in the plan, and advice on how to apply for the money. Specific publicprivate partnerships also have potential to get traction. Despite the good intentions of the 2009 plan, it largely ended up on the shelf. We cannot let the same fate happen to the 2023 Marblehead Harbor Plan. Our work now is to implement its recommendations with purpose and progress in the best interests of the town and its citizens.

While a first-rate, comprehensive harbor plan is now complete and ready to be implemented, make no mistake. To be successful, implementing it will require leadership from the Select Board, setting clear expectations, a bias for action, accountability for all parties and requisite governance changes that will ensure we don’t slip back into business as usual.

In a community like Marblehead, where the harbor defines so much of our history, quality of life and why we choose to live here, we have an obligation to protect, enhance and make sustainable our greatest resource for future generations. When we look back years from now, let it be said that this is the time when we committed ourselves to the future of Marblehead Harbor. Rob Howie is a member of the Marblehead Harbor Plan Working Group, Sailors for the Sea Skipper for Marblehead and a board member of Sustainable Marblehead.