Enforcing the Shoreland Protection Act: CLF watchdogs NH lakes.

• Position: New Hampshire - Conservation Law Foundation of New England - Brief Article

CLF HAS GONE TO COURT tO force the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) to protect the Granite State's lakes and rivers from damaging development. The State's Shoreland Protection Act requires DES to ensure that all activities within 250 feet of the water's edge will have the least possible environmental impact on valuable and fragile shorelands. DES has been woefully lax in its enforcement of this standard.

To stir DES into action, CLF directly challenged a pending permit application to build a dug-in boathouse on Squam Lake. Dug-in boathouses are built partly on the shore and partly in the water, requiring extensive dredging that exposes large areas of new lake bottom where milfoil and other invasive plant species quickly colonize. These plants take over sandy lake bottoms, turning lakes into swamps, choking out beneficial native plants, repelling swimmers and impeding boat...