Committee Looks To Complete Long-Delayed Update To Nantucket Harbor Plan

Five years after it was supposed to be ready, the Nantucket Harbor Plan Update Committee says it is about a year away from finalizing an update to the 2009 plan for Nantucket and Madaket Harbor.

At a public feedback session last week, the Committee suggested a draft will be written this fall and a final plan will be ready for approval next Spring or Summer. This comes a year after a similar feedback session where Spring 2024 was proposed as a possible approval date, the latest in a series of delays that began before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal operations in 2020. The 2009 plan was supposed to be replaced in 2019, but unexpected complications have meant that the old plan has limped along for another five years.

The new plan, which will establish community goals and policies to guide public and private land use along the harbors, is set to contain dozens of recommendations that would cost millions of dollars to implement, including developing a stormwater by-law, investing significant Town funds in coastal resilience, and hiring a dedicated agent to oversee the Town’s fertilizer program.

The plan is split into a number of sections with significant overlap: coastal resilience; public access; the commercial waterfront; boating, harbor operations and safety/navigation; natural resources; water quality; commercial and recreational fishing, and coordination and administration.

"The one thread that ran through all of these sections was education,” Committee chair Linda Williams said. “If we don't educate [the public]...we're never going to get anywhere. So, part of almost every single section is education. We said that every week.”

The town team responsible for the new plan includes members from a bevy of town boards and local organizations, as well as two at-large members. Just like in 2009, the town is also working with UMass Boston’s Urban Harbors Institute, targeting the high bar of state approval.

Peppered with questions from dozens of attendees, the Committee emphasized that there will be more public information sessions after a draft has been written, and encouraged the public to attend the Committee’s bi-weekly open meetings to ask questions and provide input.

The Committee has also floated the idea of increasing the embarkation fee for the island’s ferries, a concept similar to one already proposed by a group of Cape Cod politicians including Nantucket State Senator Julian Cyr currently pending before the Massachusetts legislature.