LINCOLN, Maine — It was 9 a.m. Thursday and Jerry Davis was hunting. His weapons were a boat, clipboard, camera, an eye for certain details and some old 5-year-old pictures stored in a computer database.
The town’s code enforcement officer had a certain quarry in mind: shoreline code violations.
“This is just a perfect day for this,” Davis said as he edged into the small boat at the public dock on Long Pond.
The sun was bright; the sky, almost cloudless. A slight breeze stirred leaves on nearby trees.
Spurred partially by publicity of his last shoreline inspection, in which a McGregor Road resident was found to have cut at least eight trees from her Upper Cold Stream Pond property — a blatant violation of Maine Department of Environmental Protection regulations — Davis was beginning a second inspection.
Twice annually Davis inspects all pond and lake shorelines within town lines, plus the Penobscot River. He also does spot inspections whenever problems are reported. It’s a formidable job. Thursday’s targets were the shorelines of Caribou, Egg and Long ponds, three contiguous water bodies in northeastern Lincoln.
On the clipboard Davis had a lot-by-lot shoreline map that he had carefully marked. He jotted notes and took pictures of the shorelines. Later, Thursday’s pictures would be compared to pictures he took when he first started as the town’s code enforcement officer five years ago. This would reveal any changes that might prove to be violations.
Davis’ database of shoreline pictures is the core of a valuable monitoring method, said his boss, code enforcement supervisor Ruth Birtz.
“He has probably taken over 1,200 pictures,” Birtz said Thursday.
“I think Jerry does an excellent job,” she added. “He has provided a system where we can measure these valuations. We have never had as comprehensive a coverage of the waterfront as this. It is quite an accomplishment.
“And the 14 lakes are a tremendous enforcement challenge,” Birtz said. “Most communities think one lake is a challenge. We have 14 lakes and one river.”
A Lincoln native, the 49-year-old Davis is quick to admit that he doesn’t typically handle shoreline maintenance all by himself. Officials from the DEP, which with other agencies is tasked with maintaining water quality, usually accompany him during inspections.
Budget cuts have reduced DEP inspection time, Davis said, so Thursday’s trip was solo. Over the next 3½ hours, Davis carefully circled the lakes’ shorelines in search of violations, including erosion, overcutting of trees and shrubs, gravel set too close to shorelines within the state-required setbacks, new buildings or septic sys-tems built without permits, and water pollution.
Violations could cost property owners $100 to $2,500 a day in fines, plus remediation expenses, but Davis’ approach is more corrective than punitive. In five years of shoreline inspections, he hasn’t had to fine a landowner, he said.
“When I started, the mindset was don’t look, don’t tell,” Davis said. “Now it seems to be that if somebody does something [illegal], even a neighbor, I will get a call, even if it’s anonymous, which I don’t mind. I would rather get [an anonymous call] and stop a violation before it gets too far along.”
Alerted to the problem by anonymous calls, Davis resolved the McGregor Road incident when the resident agreed to replant replacements for the eight trees that were removed illegally.
With environmental awareness generally increasing, more landowners seek town advice before taking drastic action, Davis said. Stiffening regulations are also part of the proactivity. Trees and other vegetation are regulated by state law because the growth helps keep the water free of pollutants. Setback maintenance is crucial to maintaining water quality in lakes.
Under state law, residents have 15 days to correct or provide a plan for correcting violations or they could face civil court action and the daily fines.
Still, violations occur. Davis found four violations on Mattanawcook Lake last Friday, including a sunken boat with its eight-cylinder engine totally immersed, oil slowly leaking from it. A nearby lot had an illegal septic system installed.
“It was a PVC pipe stuck into a blue barrel that was half-buried in the ground, so probably human waste can get into the water from there,” Davis said. “Both [violations] are bad hazards.”
Davis located the property and boat owners and mailed them certified letters Monday informing them of the violations. The violations are good examples of why shoreline inspections by boat are so important, Davis said.
Shoreline inspections by boat allow him a perspective he can’t always get on land. If, for example, a property owner posts a no-trespassing sign and refuses Davis access to land, he would need an administrative warrant to get onto a property. Walking properties individually would increase to two months the four days it typically takes him to inspect all town shorelines, he said.
“The only access to those properties [the boat and septic system] is by water,” Davis said. “If I had to do the inspections by land, I would never have seen them.”