The Washington Post reported today that the House and Senate both approved a 90-day extension for transportation funding. The House endured what The Post suggested was “an angry, finger-pointing debate,” but ultimately extended the funding at the same level for the next 90 days. The Senate, described as angry over the House’s earlier decision, “bowed to the will of the House” and agreed to a 90-day extension. As you may recall, transportation funding, or Highway Bill, is the vehicle for passage of the important Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund

Read the full article here.

The Connecticut Marine Trades Association is alerting its members of what it calls “a very intrusive bill,” HB 5128, An Act Concerning Certain Revisions to the Coastal Zone Management Statutes. This bill, which would permit a “rise in the sea level” to be a factor in denying the use of or rebuilding on your waterfront or coastal property, has been approved by the Environment Committee and referred on to the House.

The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, along the CMTA, believe that this bill gives unprecedented new powers to the state and local planning entities to interfere with development on the shore. The bill also uses language that we find puzzling, such as “to encourage the strategic realignment of development.” Marinas and other marine facilities could be at risk.

This is an incredibly important issue that simply has not received the attention and scrutiny it needs in the short legislative session. Additionally, a Shoreline Preservation Task Force has already been formed, and the issues are too impacting to make any decision before this group has had a chance to discuss all factors.

The MRAA echoes the CMTA’s concern, and we urge our Connecticut-based members to contact your state legislators today about this legislation and ask them to not take action on it this session. Your call to Hartford will be short but it’s very important that you make it. If you need some assistance finding a name or a phone number, call the CMTA office, 860-767-2645. CMTA is also asking that you email a short summary of any discussions you have with legislators on to Linda Kowalski of The Kowalski Group LLC.

For more information on this, you can find the substitute language adopted by the committee on the Connecticut General Assembly web site. 

Read the testimony offered by the CMTA on the subject.

Through the Highway Bill, which we have been following over the last few weeks and months, the House of Representatives is attempting to un-freeze funds from the Harbor Maintenance Fund. The Administration has frozen these funds, which have historically been managed by the Army Corps of Engineers and have been used to dredge larger ports.

Late last week, several Senators crafted a letter urging the Senate to include funding to dredge smaller, seldom-used ports and harbors that fall below the threshold of the Corps. This is an important issue.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) has also issued a press release on the letter. You can read both the letter and the press release below, in addition to the letter that the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas has written and sent to the Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development Subcommittee.

Read MRAA’s letter supporting dredging

Read the letter signed by the Senators

Read the press release from Senator Cantwell

I find the article at the link below a little hard to believe, but I wanted to provide you with a brief status on the CAFE issue. Like many lobbyists who work on the CAFE issue, I purchased a car of choice several years ago and have been babying it so the car will last many years in anticipation of significant downsizing of the fleet and a reduced choice of vehicles. 

The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas has long opposed the significant increases in CAFE standards. especially the huge increases being proposed by the Administration (up to 54.5 mpg by 2025 with 5% increase per year.)  MRAA’s concern is that the smaller vehicles that will be produced to meet the high CAFE standards will not be strong enough to safely pull the size of boats popular with consumers. 

Now a newly released study by the University of Michigan Department of Engineering says the automakers will actually be able to increase the size of vehicles due to the way the proposed rule is written. Perhaps that is why there hasn’t been an uproar to oppose these increases in CAFE. The auto manufacturers have not been willing to fund a campaign, for example. Please read the article.  It is brief but good.

Study: CAFE Standards Could Mean Bigger Cars, Not Smaller Ones

The following is a link to an article in the non-partisan newspaper “The Hill,” on the Highway Bill. As you may recall, the Highway Bill is the vehicle for passage of the important Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund. 

In the past, the Highway Bill has been a non-partisan bill. It has been used by Congress to create construction jobs. A Senate version of this bill has passed with 74 “yes” votes, making it non-partisan. Over in The House, where the version of this bill also includes an unfreezing of the important Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund needed for dredging projects, Members refuse to take up the Senate Bill and now are promising to pass a short-term extension next week. Frankly, this action is what we expected. 

However, the majority leadership in the Senate now refuses to take up a short-term extension of the bill. The current funding is set to expire at the end of this week, on March 31, so we are now caught up in Presidential year politics. Passage is also hurt by Members remembering that funds for the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” were contained in a previous Highway Bill of a prior election year.

Here’s the link if you would like to read more:

House sidesteps Senate $109B highway bill for short-term bill

The Marine Retailers Association of the Americas authored a letter opposing a state initiative in Massachusetts known as the Salt Water Angler Buy Back Study, which would use federal dollars to pay people not to fish.

In Massachusetts, the MRAA supports the position of the Massachusetts MTA to oppose a state program which would pay up to $500 to buy back fish licenses. MRAA has long supported the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund, which provides federal money to states for fish hatcheries, habitat restoration, education of anglers and boaters, construction of boat access points, and boating safety.

We have called for studies of fishing and boating to validate the immense social and economic impact of the two industries and strongly support the outreach efforts to increase the exposure of fishing and boating. MRAA fully understands the where, how, and why people choose to boat and fish for family recreation, but MRAA never thought our government would actually pay Americans not to fish as part of a study method of a research project.

The Board of the Massachusetts MTA will be meeting in person with key administrators of the fishing programs in April to discuss this offer.

Read the letter to leaders in Massachusetts

A proposed U.S. rule which would require automakers to double their vehicles average fuel economy to 54.5 mpg by 2025 may cost consumers $157 billion in additional vehicle costs but could cost the boating industry much more by killing the ability for Americans to pull their boats.

The proposed rule requires annual fuel economy increases of 5 percent for cars. Light trucks, including pickups and SUVs, must meet a 3.5-percent increase in average mpg for the first five years before rising to 5 percent.

“MRAA has long opposed increases to auto industry CAFÉ standards and will vigorously oppose this latest attempt,” says Matt Gruhn, MRAA President. “Besides being concerned what the new CAFÉ standards would do to recreational boating, we believe the rule was rushed and may jeopardize safety by reducing the weight and size of vehicles on the road.”

To reach a federal mandated doubling of the CAFÉ standard, automakers will work to downsize weight, horsepower, and torque of vehicle, potentially greatly inhibiting ability to tow recreational boats. There is expected to be increased emphasis on promoting all-electric vehicles and hybrids.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced H.R. 3109, the Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act of 2012, along with 17 original co-sponsors late in 2011. The bill is very similar to one introduced by Rep. Pingree two years ago, which had the support of several national and state marine trades associations, including MRAA. MRAA has joined a newly formed coalition organized to support the bill.

H.R. 3109 recognizes the importance of keeping water-dependent commercial activities in many coastal communities and specifically identified commercial fishing, recreational fishing, tourism, aquaculture, boat building, transportation, and “other” businesses that support these activities. For example, boat yards that support any of these activities would be included under the special protections of the bill. It further says these activities are dependent on coastal access in the form of docks, wharfs, lifts, wet and dry storage in marinas, boat ramps, boat hauling, repair, and construction facilities.

Many of these activities are threatened due to loss of access and the pressures of conversion to privately owned commercial and residential activities.

The bill sets up a grant program to establish a working waterfronts plan in coastal states. The bill authorizes $25 million in 2012, $50 million in 2013, and $75 million in 2014 and 2015. In addition, funds from the program could be used by a state to purchase working waterfronts or to acquire an interest in a working waterfront. The state may also allow a non-government organization to manage the properties. However, the bill requires the property be open to the public. Private clubs would not qualify for usage of the funds.

A working waterfront is defined as real property including support structures over water and other facilities that provide access to coastal areas and to people engaged in commercial waterfront activities.

The issue of working waterfronts has been one of considerable concern to boating and fishing businesses and trade associations. With the escalating property values on the waterfronts in most communities and the increasing pressures to develop waterfronts for residential use, many small marine businesses are squeezed from declining revenues and rising taxes. The commercial, cultural, and historical values of the working waterfronts are adversely impacted by private residential development with devastating consequences for any coastal communities.

In an unprecedented effort to sustain commercial and recreational fishing in the next several decades, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration set the world’s first catch limits for every species of marine animal it manages from Alaska Polluck to Caribbean conch making an important shift in public policy that could easily impact recreational fishing and boating. There are approximately 528 species of marine animals being managed by the federal government.

Unlike most recent public policy debates divided along party lines in Congress, this decision was originally forged by a Republican president and finished with the backing of a Democratic president. Five years ago when President George Bush signed the re-authorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which dates to the mid-1870s and governs all fishing in our country, language was inserted in the bill requiring each fishery to have animal catch limits in place by the end of the 2011 to end “overfishing.”

To date NOAA has set catch limits on 40 of the 46 fishery management plans and expects the remaining six plans to have catch limits by the beginning of the 2013 fishing season beginning on May 1. Some fish like Mahi-Mahi and Wahoo, a game fish in the southeast Atlantic, will have catch limits for the first time.

Until recently, regional management councils representing a mix of local interests and anglers wrote the rules of fish stocks and regularly used scientific advice to establish fish management plans. Critics of the NOAA decision, like MRAA, argue the new plan lacks the scientific data to justify the restrictions and seeks to undo them. Efforts are underway led by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Rep. Water B. Jones (R-N.C.) to relax some of the new catch limits.

Anglers are increasingly concerned that fishing will be curtailed without sufficient justification due to the pressure exerted by environmental groups and even a few fishing groups.

To date controls over recreational fishing are spotty. NOAA has created an expanded dockside survey and will use new methods to analyze the results. After an annual catch limit is set for a recreational fishery, NOAA managers can adopt several measures, such as limiting the season or the size of fish that can be taken.

“Boating and fishing groups face a long battle to relax these new catch limits,” says Matt Gruhn, MRAA President. “MRAA is committed to the support of recreational fishing and recognizes the importance of a strong fishing industry for a strong boating industry. We will work hard to relax these new rules.”