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NOVEMBER 28, 2014
SERVING NORTHERN WORCESTER COUNTY
HOLIDAY Ocean City Today and Bayside Gazette will be closed Friday for the holiday. We will reopen on Monday at 8:30 a.m.
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Reef grief from feds stalls work Permits can’t be renewed without testing ocean floor for cultural significance
WARM UP
KARA HALLISEY/OCEAN CITY TODAY
The first patrons check out the hot chocolate booth during the Winterfest of Lights opening festivities, Nov. 20, at Northside Park on 125th Street. The annual Ocean City event officially began last Thursday and will run through early January.
Piggyback tax waits on Supreme Court Millions at stake as the high court decides whether counties such as Worcester can tax income earned and taxed in other states. Story on Page 6
Zack Hoopes Staff Writer (Nov. 28, 2014) There used to be a time that you could pile whatever you wanted on the ocean floor and the federal government wouldn’t say anything about it. For better or for worse, those days have passed. Renewal of the permits that allow the Ocean City Reef Foundation to build artificial reefs off the resort’s coast could be endangered, proponents fear, by a somewhat amorphous set of federal guidelines regarding “cultural resources.” The basis for the guidelines comes from a 2012 study by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which was conducted in order to declare a “Finding of No Historic Properties Affected” with regard to the lease of federal waters for offshore wind farming. “Our permits are due to expire, and there are some regulations we did not have to meet in the past that may be cost-prohibitive for us,” said reef advocate Gail Blazer. “I understand why we have to go through this process, but I’m just not sure it was intended to this extent. It was intended for wind farms.” The Ocean City Reef Foundation’s program consists of submerging various structures — concrete blocks, scrap steel, even the shells of old ships — off the coast of the resort. These structures eventually attract plant matter, which attract mollusks, which attract crustaceans, which attract fish, which attract bigger fish and help to rebuild an ecosystem that would otherwise be an underwater desert. The foundation is privately funded See BOEM’S Page 3