‘Floating camps’ are popping up all over Maine and the state can’t stop them

By Julie Harris, Bangor Daily News Staff

Floating camps are popping up more and more in Maine’s lakes, ponds and rivers. 

These floating structures aren’t houseboats, and many don’t have motors at all. They resemble camps that you would see on shore, except they float, and are anchored to the bottom or tied to something onshore. They come with decks, planter boxes and second stories or vaulted ceilings. 

Cool, right? Well, not exactly.

The state says the floating camps are blocking the views from houses and camps onshore, posing pollution risks, and creating congestion at public docks and boat ramps. Some are even being used as seasonal rental properties. 

Because they are not solidly onshore, these camps are beyond the reach of private property boundaries and shore regulations that protect the water and fishery from pollution. And because Maine doesn’t have a clear definition of what is a boat and what isn’t, there’s no consensus of what regulations apply to the structures. 

That could soon change, because the topic is expected to come up in discussions in the Legislature’s upcoming session, according to Mark Latti, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. 

Until regulations are in place, the number of these offshore camps will continue to grow. And unless they’re a private lake or pond, there’s not much Maine can do to stop them. 

A group involving multiple state agencies recognized the severity of the problem more than two years ago. It submitted a report, including its recommendations, to the Legislative Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry in the spring 2023 session of the 131st Legislature. 

“The group identified a need to define and regulate these non-water-dependent floating structures in order to protect Maine’s waters, and this will take a collaborative approach involving the public, the Legislature and various state agencies,” DIF&W Deputy Commissioner Tim Peabody said.

In practice, Maine generally allows anything that has a motor to be registered as a boat, even though the state has no universal definition for a recreational boat. Houseboats, which have been allowed legally on Maine’s inland waters for decades, have a fairly solid definition and depend on being on the water.

“Watercraft is defined throughout Maine statutes, and there are multiple definitions regarding watercraft depending on where it is found” in each agency, Latti said.

The reason for the loophole in the state’s laws and regulations mostly has to do with how authority over what happens on Maine waters is divided between multiple agencies.

The bottoms of lakes and ponds are under the jurisdiction of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. The water and its quality is the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s responsibility. The fish, wildlife and plants, plus boats on inland waters, are regulated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. In unorganized territories, the Land Use Planning Commission has some say in what can be built where, but no authority for enforcement. If it’s in an intertidal region, the Maine Marine Patrol becomes involved. The Land Use Planning Commission and Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands both fall under the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Confused yet?

On top of that, towns bordering inland waters have a right to establish a harbormaster to enforce municipal mooring rules, but rely on the state to have clear regulations around watercraft. That gets the Maine Municipal Association and the Maine Harbormasters Association involved as well. 

Some towns have established their own definitions of houseboats and floating camps. But they often have no capacity to address disputes over lake and pond usage and there may be multiple towns that surround one body of water, according to a state report.

Everyone has a stake in Maine’s lakes and ponds, but no one has the authority to remove a floating camp.

The challenge, the report submitted to the Legislative Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry said, is “the lack of a clear violation of law or regulation for the unauthorized placement” of floating camps. If there’s agreement that the floating camps should not be allowed, “a clear prohibition in statute would allow for enforcement of this prohibition.”

It has identified two possible directions for legislation it says would help.

The first, which is what the report recommends, would be to ban floating camps whose primary use is habitation, not navigation. It would require changing sections of other laws, rules and policies in multiple agencies to close loopholes. It would still allow true houseboats, which would have specific criteria to be met regarding structure, size, navigation and pollution control. This is thought to change what will and won’t be registered as a motorboat.

The second option would be to establish a new program within an existing agency to oversee a permitting and enforcement system that would regulate but not ban floating camps.

There is no current proposed legislation to the knowledge of the Maine departments of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife or Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, according to their respective spokesmen.

The multi-agency report distinguishes between non-water dependent floating structures and water dependent. A non-water dependent structure would be a floating camp, because it could exist and be functional on land. Water-dependent would include boats and true houseboats.

That distinction, and whether the floating object is used primarily for human habitation or navigation, will be key in how definitions for boats, houseboats and floating camps are crafted.

DIF&W also proposes changes to the motorboat registration process that will define and set standards for legal houseboats to distinguish them from floating camps anchored in the water. 

This change would make it harder for floating camps to be registered as boats, and for their owners to avoid DEP regulations that protect the environment around the shoreline. 

It also proposes a clear definition of what can be registered as a boat and what cannot.