Landing on the Right Boat Ramp Solution -- For Now

https://www.parishcreeklanding.com/

In the crazy saga of the South County boat ramp, the County has finally done the right thing, after maybe doing the wrong thing, but maybe for the right reason, but with the wrong information.

The County this week has contracted with Parish Creek Landing Marina to allow county boaters to launch there from now through October. This builds on the emergency agreement created to solve the July 4th mess, when the County lost access to the Discovery Village boat ramp because of perceived financial risk, but based on wildly incomplete ramp usage data.

(We at the Growth Action Network are somewhere between puzzled-troubled-outraged by the process which a) invested more than $2M in the Discovery Village parcel, b) voted to fund another year's lease, then c) overnight voted 6-1 to cancel it, forcing the county to d) fund an emergency agreement to use the Parish Creek Marina boat ramp. We hope to write about this in a future message.)

The agreement with Parish Creek Marina through the end of this boating season is good news. For now. It is a start, but needs to be extended into the winter and spring to support watermen who are crabbing and oystering into the colder months.

For now, it brings the number of public boat ramps in the County back to three -- still a woefully inadequate number given the tens of thousands of boats and the 533 miles of shoreline in AACo. Learning from the July 4th experience, this agreement now provides full time staff during operation to assist boaters and help with parking, and includes bathroom facilities.

The better news is that the Dept of Rec and Parks (DRP) has committed to adding more water access for county residents. We've heard this from the administration for 6 years, but 4 River Days a year is not sufficient to right this long standing inequity. With 145 commercial marinas well distributed around the County, we in GAN can only hope that DRP learns the lessons of this lease and is swift about creating a program that greatly expands water access for all in AACo.