Dock dispute shifts tides of harbor control in state
GREENWICH — Mark and Marti Marache bought waterfront land on the north end of Greenwich Cove in 2001, assuming they would one day have a family and launch their boat from their own dock.
Twenty years later, their two boys have grown into teenagers and they have yet to launch a boat from their property and the family has spent more than $315,000 in fees to attorneys and architects along the way. The legal question raised by the Marache’s dock on whether — or when — local harbor managers can place binding recommendations on the state has recently become part of local maritime precedent.
The court rulings in the Marache dock case put clear limits on local harbor management commission recommendations compared with before the case went to court, according to John Pinto, president of the Connecticut Harbor Management Association.
“What it’s done is negate the input of any harbor management commission with regard to making any decision in and around its harbor,” Pinto said in March. “We have no means to make any recommendation on a decision that is put forward to the DEEP ... unless that plan or that application is specifically laid out” in the harbor management plan.
The drawn-out and contentious arguments surrounding the dock’s building also frayed the relationships between local harbor officials and the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in the process, Pinto said.
“We’ve always had good rapport with all of the members of the DEEP. But, all the sudden, since this court decision, things have now started to change with regard to the … rapport that we thought we had,” Pinto said.
Even legislatively, the Greenwich dock dispute has had an effect.
Bill No. 5614 was introduced earlier this year and it would have granted more authority to local managers, but it died in committee. First Selectman Fred Camillo and several local harbor managers supported the bill but both DEEP and the state Department of Transportation were opposed.
A nine-year saga
The Maraches enjoy the water and they specifically picked this part of Greenwich so they could get into the cove with their boys, they said.
“We moved into Perkley Lane to raise the kids on the waterfront and part of that is boats and docks,” Marti Marache said in May. “We never imagined that we would come across opposition.”
“I felt like we were victimized a little bit because everyone else had a dock, but we had a neighbor that just didn’t want to see it,” Mark Marache said.
The Maraches first applied to build a dock in 2014, but refiled again in 2015.
Their neighbors, Susan and Bruce Cohen at 7 Perkley Lane, said they were strongly opposed to the construction of the dock from the beginning.
“We believed that that piece of property next to us, being almost entirely tidal wetlands, was not developable,” Bruce Cohen said in May. “We relied on the fact that the property really wouldn’t accommodate another house or any improvements.”
The Cohens spent nearly a decade fighting the Marache dock with neighborhood pleas and at town meetings, before escalating to the legal system. A state court sided with the Maraches in 2022 and closed down further appeals.
The Maraches own two plots of land: One with their home at 12 Perkley and another undeveloped, waterfront lot at 15 Perkley across a small street.
The Cohens have lived at 7 Perkley for 50 years and their land is adjacent to the Maraches’ waterfront property. Susan Cohen, a landscape architect, has toiled to turn their backyard into a showcase of her skills, but the Cohens said the dock obstructs their view of the water.
“We were disappointed that our neighbor felt that they wanted to build a dock here, right in the middle of the wetlands,” Bruce Cohen said.
The Cohens’ home also has a dock. Most of the homes in the area have docks — about 15 are visible from the end of Perkley Lane — but the Maraches’ dock is larger than the others in the cove, in part because of its detached design and in part because it has a boat lift.
The Maraches were able to build their dock in 2019, but they have yet to permanently move their boat from its mooring spot in Nantucket, Mass. —
where it has been stored for most of the past decade — because the boatlift still needs electrical work and the Maraches said they have prioritized paying their legal bills instead.
Dock on the docket
There are 26 official harbor management commissions in the state, including ones in neighboring Norwalk and Bridgeport.
Local managers and DEEP are bound by harbor management plans, which are drafted by the municipalities and approved by DEEP so the two entities have a clear understanding of their roles. Greenwich’s Harbor Management Plan was adopted in 2017 and the Greenwich Harbor Management Commission is responsible for its implementation.
In Greenwich, docks are considered accessory structures and must be accompanied by a primary building. So instead of building a structure on their land at 15 Perkley Lane, the Maraches opted to build a detached dock across the street.
This choice meant the dock wasn’t in the Greenwich’s Planning and Zoning jurisdiction but rather squarely in DEEP’s control. The Maraches also chose to add a boatlift that hoists vessels up out of the water, since the tide gets low there.
While most other nearby homes in the cove have docks, they are all attached to the land and do not have boatlifts.
The Maraches tinkered with their dock design for years, commissioning at least a dozen different designs to comply with various regulations and neighborhood requests, each costing thousands of dollars.
“We never in a million years
imagined that it would end up being so much money,” Marti Marache said. “At some point, we had spent too much to turn back.”
DEEP eventually issued a tentative approval of the permit application in March 2018, according to court records, and a final approval of the Marache dock in October 2019.
Between that tentative and final approval, Greenwich’s Harbor Management Commission said that DEEP had disregarded its recommendations on the dock, even though it was required to take them into consideration, a claim which DEEP rejected.
The Cohens filed an administrative appeal of DEEP’s permit approval, saying that the decision allows for the evasion of local municipal zoning rules, as well as harm to their personal views of the water. The suit was argued by James Fogarty, one of Bruce Cohen’s partners at Fogarty Cohen Russo & Nemiroff LLC.
“We were very hopeful that the structure that you’re seeing right now would never get built, one way or another,” Bruce Cohen said.
The town of Greenwich argued in court that DEEP’s standard of having to outline all possible points of recommendation in a harbor management plan would require plans to predetermine every possible application that may come before them in the future, which “defeats the discretion vested in harbor management commissions.”
State Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher eventually affirmed DEEP’s permit decision for the Maraches in January 2021, saying the Maraches have a right to wharf out on their property.
Additionally, Moukawsher
wrote that management commissions do not have the power to make binding recommendations to DEEP on permits affecting harbors.
“The Greenwich Harbor Management Commission has no veto authority over the state permit at issue here,” the ruling read. “What the commission said wasn’t binding, and DEEP was free to give it what weight it wished.”
Cohen and the town of Greenwich appealed to Connecticut’s Appellate Court in February 2021, an appeal which failed in October 2022. Connecticut’s Supreme Court denied a petition to review the case in December, which brought the case to a close.
More recently, local harbor managers have been talking with DEEP about the ruling and how they can get back on the same page.
Geoffrey Steadman, a consultant to Greenwich’s Harbor Management Commission and other commissions along the coast, said he sees the ruling in a more positive light. Steadman said the ruling has started a conversation between DEEP and local managers, one that he believes will result in a better Harbor Management Act.
“This is an opportunity, not to the negative, but to update the statutes to reflect all of what’s been learned since 1984 with respect to the Harbor Management Act,” Steadman said, referencing the year the HMA became law.
The Maraches said they felt like their sons lost an opportunity to enjoy the waterfront property they worked hard to afford and that the whole saga is still upsetting.
“I’m a bit angry,” Marti Marache said. “I’m a bit bitter about it because of the time wasted.”