The following news story is from the N.H. Union Leader.

Ossipee—August 12, 2024—The commotion that arose after the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services approved nine boat slips on Loon Island in Ossipee Lake’s Leavitt Bay seemed to abate Friday, when agency officials explained the decision and the applicants offered to significantly scale back the project.

In May, the DES granted the application of Deborah and Kevin Randall, who also own waterfront property on Leavitt Bay on the southeastern end of Ossipee Lake, to build a dock structure with up to five “fingers” on the .91-acre Loon Island.

Assuming that the Randalls, who were represented during an informal gathering at the Ossipee Town Hall by Attorney Christopher Boldt, want to move forward with having at least five slips on Loon Island, the DES approval of the original nine-slip plan would then have to be ratified by the governor and Executive Council.

Any plan with fewer than five slips would not need such approval, said Adam Crepeau, DES assistant commissioner.

Along with Rene Pelletier, the director of the DES water division, Crepeau was invited to Friday’s, 90-minute informational session by District 1 Executive Councilor Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, who recently got an earful from Ossipee Lake property owners about the seeming lack of due process in the approval of the Loon Island docks.

In June, more than 200 waterfront owners, the Ossipee Lake Alliance, Camp Marist, Green Mountain Conservation Group, the Loon Preservation Committee, and the Berry Bay Association appealed the approval of the docks, which would be located off a wharf on the southern end of Loon Island.

Ultimately denied, the appeal alleged that the approval was illegal because it violated the state’s dock standards on water bodies of less than 1,000 acres and because the Randalls’ application “falsely stated the island does not contain protected species” — loons.

Opponents of the docks worried that they would only add to an already congested situation on Ossipee Lake and exacerbate water-quality problems in Leavitt Bay.

Attorney Christopher Boldt, who represented the Randalls, addressed the more than 100 in attendance Friday, saying that what the Randalls had been approved for was “not going to be a beachhead for some kind of commercial marina.”

In published news reports, the Randalls said they wanted docks on Loon Island to be used by friends and family members, to deter trespassers, and potentially to be rented.

“I am authorized” to propose that there be two, not five ‘fingers,'” Boldt continued, asking the audience whether that concession makes “this go away?”

The reply was, “No.”

Crepeau and Pelletier said DES properly approved the Randalls’ application and that concerns about increased boat traffic and the well-being of loons were not in their jurisdiction, although the Department of Fish and Game did say it had no worries about the Loon Island docks.

Regulations promulgated by state agencies are all borne of legislative action, said Crepeau, who with Kenney, urged attendees to contact their state representatives and senators to let them know they have issues with how DES, in this instance, could have performed better.

Pelletier, who is a 52-year veteran of the DES, said dock regulations permit up to one dock per 75 feet of waterfront, noting that on Ossipee Lake, “A lot of people have multiple docks.”

He disputed one person’s description of the approval of the Loon Island docks as “precedent setting.”

“The math is the same on a small island as a large island,” he said. “I don’t see this as precedent setting.”