Water, Water Everywhere, But...

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Access to the Chesapeake Bay’s waterfront and recreational opportunities is becoming an increasingly heated debate of public versus private rights. 

Many a summer’s afternoon, Ingrid Sandy passes Hillsmere’s beach, glancing wistfully at the picnickers, boaters, and children splashing in the calm waters. Yet tempting as it seems, so peaceful and close, Sandy knows she isn’t welcome there.

Hillsmere used to be more casual but, like other increasingly affluent Annapolis-area waterfront communities, has now closed off its shore. So, on sunny weekends, Sandy, a 35-year-old house cleaner, packs up towels and her five kids to hunt for public beaches, as far as an hour away.

“You want to enjoy a bit of sun and the water, but not have to drive so much,” says Sandy, who gave up trying to visit Hillsmere’s South River beach, barely a mile from her home, when a gatekeeper began checking residential stickers.

Water can be glimpsed all around Anne Arundel and many Maryland counties, but it’s often tantalizingly out of reach. Even though nearly 80 beaches stretch along 533 miles of shoreline in Anne Arundel County alone, by far the most in Maryland, all but a handful are privately owned. In an area defined by the Chesapeake Bay, amid rivers dotted with sleek sailboats and secluded coves, it’s easier to find a dog beach.

Over a half-century of neighborhood resistance and racial divisions have left few public places to swim, fish, or sunbathe. Piers are often overcrowded, as is Sandy Point, the state’s biggest beach on the Bay. Meanwhile, the county owns over a thousand acres of little-used shorefront parkland but has been slow to open new outlets. A proposed Navy golf course expansion threatens access to a popular conservation area overlooking Whitehall Bay and the Chesapeake. And in our State Capital, Annapolis’ main park had to ban water sports because of an electric current. 

“Here we are in a waterfront city, known for our sailing, but it’s not really available for everyone,” says Annapolis Del. Shaneka Henson, who has fielded multiple summers’ of complaints over water access, including from her Dad, an avid fisherman.

In coastal areas from California to North Carolina, similar struggles are intensifying as population growth, wealth, and outdoor sports pit people’s love of the water against private property rights. Even in laid-back Puerto Rico, well-to-do retirees are fencing off beach trails.

Maryland is now a deeply suburban state of 6.15 million residents, up 15 percent in the past two decades. Cleaner water, thanks to “Save the Bay” activism, is inspiring more people to paddle, windsurf, or swim long distances. Yet much of Maryland’s 4,100 miles along the Bay and surrounding tributaries has long been developed. Conservationists fear the fraction of shoreline open to the public is only modestly better than the 2 percent estimated years ago. And as luxury homes replace the last cottages and working docks, informal access points continue to disappear. 

Over the past three summers, as crowds of covid-weary people escaped outside, the difficulties in finding a little sand and solitude became glaringly obvious. As enterprising beachgoers stuck in Bay Bridge traffic went searching for alternatives in Anne Arundel and Queen Anne’s counties, besieged waterfront communities posted “Private” signs and hired security guards. Kayakers risked tickets to park by coves. In Eastport, neighbors looked up land records and talked to lawyers. And at the height of the pandemic, a young Black Annapolis alderman and three friends strolled down to a dock, only to be stopped by a cop.

“Injustice, discrimination, malpractice. I think it’s been decades, if not generations, in the making,” says Mike Lofton, who helped found a citizens group in 2009 to lobby Anne Arundel County to open more waterfront parkland.

Untapped Potential or Sandy Point 2.0?

On a sun-drenched June day in 2001, Maryland’s lieutenant governor and other dignitaries turned over a spectacular beachfront property, acquired through a $9 million federal and state investment, to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Charlie Stek, then a U.S. Senate aide, marveled at the three miles of sand he had only seen from the Bay Bridge.

Holly Beach Farm once was a sprawling plantation hugging the Bay, along with an adjacent property that became Sandy Point State Park. In his speech, Stek planned to celebrate how ordinary people, like wildlife and the Bay itself, would benefit. But other officials quickly warned him not to — for fear of upsetting neighbors, since there was no plan for recreational use. 

Two decades later, cars snake for miles around Sandy Point, Maryland’s best-known beach outside Ocean City. Sandy Point draws over a million visitors a year—and repeatedly overran capacity during the pandemic’s first year as state parks recorded a staggering 21.5 million visitors. Among them was Ingrid Sandy’s family, who found the beach so packed with anglers, paddlers, picnickers, and tanners that they retreated to play football on the grass. 

As the few small local beaches also turned people away, Sandy began her elusive search for “a place that’s affordable, where the water is clean, and there are some amenities.” Having grown up wading in the waves of Veracruz, Mexico, Sandy, who graduated from Annapolis High, could find nothing similar here: Sandy Point was overwhelmed and ocean beaches a 234-mile roundtrip. Eventually, she drove an hour south and paid out-of-county fees at a Calvert County beach.

All the while, across the busy highway from Sandy Point, the 300 acres of pristine woods and shore at Holly Beach remain empty, roped off to all except the occasional school group.

“Quite honestly, there’s been very little activity at the property ever since,” says Stek, a sailor and founding member of the Chesapeake Conservancy, who retired near Sandy Point, only to find himself frequently blocked in by beach traffic.

Long forgotten, Holly Beach is now being debated as a possible focal point for a new National Parks area centered on the Bay. Civic leaders and conservationists like Stek want the land opened, arguing public use was a condition of its purchase. The nonprofit Bay Foundation, however, has said little besides noting it technically runs “public” education programs there. And people living nearby already fear a potential “traffic nightmare” and becoming “Sandy Point 2.0.”

Meanwhile, the pandemic crush has prompted a new sense of urgency about the scarcity of public outlets. The state legislature voted this year to spend millions on upgrading shorefront parks. A surviving fragment of Annapolis’ historic Black beaches is now being preserved. Annapolis is conducting a water-access equity study, and the mayor wants to dredge a silted cove, refurbish several creekside parks, and pilot an electric ferry between Eastport and City Dock. 

But water-access activists worry it’s too little—and may be too late. Locals accustomed to jogging, fishing, and bird-watching at Greenbury Point quickly organized on Facebook after discovering the Naval Academy Golf Association wants to build a second members-only course on the 230-acre nature preserve. Leading environmental groups also sounded alarm. And in Eastport, angry residents complain they’re losing favorite spots to launch their kayaks.

“We should be able to have both—big, beautiful houses on the water but also public access to the water,” says Jessica Pachler, who is fighting to keep an easement on Spa Creek, so families like hers can look for crabs or catch a water taxi.

Past Patterns Echo in the Present

Hiking around local parks with his wife over a decade ago, Lofton was astonished to find beautiful stretches of beachfront “hiding in plain sight.” Over time, he blamed a recurring pattern: 

When a waterfront property appears close to development, panicked neighbors often beg the county, or state, to preserve it. But buying environmentally sensitive land for a public park is just the start. Underfunded agencies then have to figure out staffing, parking, testing the water, and installing toilets. Until recently, liability worries also made the county reluctant to permit people to swim at their own risk–though it’s typical at private beaches. It’s a major reason why people can only enjoy the view, while dogs are allowed to cool off, at Quiet Waters and Downs parks.

As time passes, those living near out-of-the-way waterfront come to treasure the seclusion as their own. In biking the county’s back roads, Walter Reiter, a 58-year-old sailor and canoer, frequently finds grassy points by rivers, which “folks have just taken over as their yard.” Often, Reiter’s first clue is a “No Parking” sign. “It’s not from ‘dawn to dusk,’” he says. “It’s No Parking. Ever.”

Perhaps the most striking example is two long-deserted beaches along the South River’s merging with the Bay. Once catering to “whites-only” and “No Jews” during the heyday of Chesapeake Bay resorts, Mayo Beach and Beverly Triton closed after the Supreme Court forced beaches to desegregate in 1955. But while Annapolis’ Black resorts were sold for condos, the mostly white Mayo community forestalled similar development by pushing the county to acquire both beaches in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Extremely limited parking, neighbors patrolling the waterfront, and a peculiar requirement that beach permits be bought on-site, in cash, discouraged visitors. Until the end of 2019, Beverly Triton’s surrounding homeowners also quietly leased a third of the beach for their own use–for a dollar a year. Meanwhile, Mayo Beach had limited hours and was frequently rented for weddings or company picnics, including the Saturday of last Labor Day weekend.

Parks officials insist all that’s in the past. Pasadena’s Fort Smallwood Beach, which first permitted swimming in 2016, is newly refurbished and open daily. Beverly Triton will reopen in November after $5.2 million in improvements. (The county has also rescinded the controversial lease.) And Mayo Beach is adding weekday hours in mid-August, after six weeks of summer camps. 

Free online reservations, begun last year, help prevent long lines of backed-up cars that used to spill into adjacent neighborhoods. Still, on busy weekends, the fewer than 100 parking spaces at each Mayo-area beach are quickly snapped up. 

“Demand has grown tremendously,” concedes Jessica Leys, the county parks director, “but our resources have not.” 

A blunt-spoken retiree, Lofton argues the county has listened too long to NIMBY homeowners. Parks are supported by all taxpayers, he notes, and the county still has little-used shorefront to open more boat ramps and picnic areas at 10 other “opportunity parks.” “Privileged folks need to endure a little discomfort, because other folks are also paying the bills,” he declares. 

Others worry that the poorest of the county’s 590,000 residents are disproportionately deprived. Many Black children, and now also Latinos, grow up with fewer chances to learn to swim, sail, or simply explore a sandy coastline, says Thornell Jones, an 84-year-old sailor in Annapolis.

“I’m upset that this town and this county, with all this water and all this wealth, aren’t getting Black kids on the water on a regular basis,” says Jones, who is working with Eastport Yacht Club to teach more children the sport he loves. “Some young people here don’t even realize they live on the water.”

Rights vs. Privilege

Standing on a narrow footbridge overlooking the end of Spa Creek, Keanuú Smith-Brown surveys knee-high weeds where he filmed a campaign video a year ago. 

Annapolis’ signature creek, lined elsewhere with expensive condos and yacht clubs, slows to little more than a trickle here. Despite losing his 2021 bid for City Council, Smith-Brown is eager to clean up the shore, plant trees, and install a few benches. After all, he points out, “It’s one of the only green spaces in my ward that has some water in it.”

Smith-Brown, 26, came of age long after Maryland’s once-sleepy capital transformed into a moneyed sailing and tourist center. In the last 40 years, an influx of mostly Washington-area professionals, boaters, retirees (and now investors) snapped up real-estate, leaving waterfront neighborhoods more racially and economically segregated than ever.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Eastport, a peninsula full of lively bars, where tensions over water access are rising as fast as multimillion-dollar homes.

One fraught encounter occurred just after the peak of covid lockdowns. Late one summer afternoon in 2020, Smith-Brown went with Alderman DaJuan Gay and two friends to kick back and discuss the nation’s social-justice protests at one of the condo docks on Spa Creek. But in no time, a police officer pulled up, called to investigate a report of “juveniles trespassing.”

Though the officer left once Gay identified himself, Smith-Brown is still disheartened by a moment he believes reflects deeper inequalities. As Annapolis embarks on an ambitious plan to make its main tourist destination at City Dock greener, he wonders: “What about the rest of us?”

In a town of exclusive boating clubs, Eastport once was a low-key enclave where anyone could fish or set sail. Until the 1980s, Eastport remained racially mixed and working-class, home to teachers, carpenters, Naval Academy employees, and watermen who sold crabs from their boats. Today, few such families still live there, and little waterfront is undeveloped. Meanwhile, an electric current forced Truxtun Park, the closest public alternative, to close its small shore.

Even current residents of Eastport complain they’re finding it harder to get on the water.

Pachler is so disturbed she took the city to court. As a young mother, Pachler liked to take her four kids seining along Spa Creek, especially at Wells Cove. But such expeditions became harder in recent years after one neighboring condo owner installed a floating dock, while another landscaped part of the property she assumed was protected by a city easement. 

“It’s frustrating. The water access is here, and it should be acceptable to everyone, including those fortunate enough to live on the water,” says Pachler, 46, who joined a neighbor in hiring a lawyer, and looking up old land records, in hopes of preserving access at Wells Cove.

Others feel betrayed by a developer putting up fencing and electronic gates around a marina with custom homes near the Spa Creek Bridge. The elegant townhomes, selling for as much as $4.5 million, are going up on the former Sarles and Petrini boatyards, once known for their old-fashioned building and repair of boats by hand—and their laissez-faire attitude. 

No one objected when locals used to cut across to launch paddleboards or hail a water taxi. But after initially showing plans with a public promenade, the builder has said only that’s a long-term “goal,” and in the meantime, the property needs to be secured.

“It’s a perfect example of how the 1 percenters are pushing out the rest of the 99 percent,” says Bill Borwegen, 66, who moved from Silver Spring to Eastport to enjoy a slower way of life, only to find himself in a fierce battle with the builder.

Borwegen, a board member of the Eastport Civic Association, has spent the past months firing off emails and scathing op-eds about the fence—initially denied by the city, then approved by a little-known appeals board. He’s also tracking other entry points, including one at a dead-end alley, worried by “a constant erosion of water access.”

Mayor Gavin Buckley argues the opposite is true. While he alone can’t stop private development, Buckley says, he will insist that the condo gate remain open during water-taxi hours. Moreover, Buckley believes he’s “done more for water access than any mayor” in the past 20 years. He has a long list of ideas, including the electric ferry, dredging another Eastport cove for a “world-class park,” and adding non-motorized boat launches. (The new kayak launches have, in turn, aggravated some downtown residents worried about parking.)

The mayor, an affable restaurateur who bikes to work, has his own questions about water access. Annapolitans put up with tourists parking on their narrow historic streets, he points out. So why, he wonders, can’t Bay Ridge, Arundel-on-the-Bay, Sherwood Forest, and other nearby waterfront communities allow similar two-hour parking so people can visit their beaches?

“I didn’t privatize all this land. I come from a country where we don’t privatize the waterfront,” says Buckley, who grew up in Australia. “All that happened before I got here.”

Be a Good Neighbor

A bitter wind is whipping across Duvall Creek as Allison Wynn tugs on her swim cap and wades into the 35-degree water. Behind her, ten men and women follow, some in wetsuits, others shivering in Speedos, determined to get in their morning exercise. 

Wynn has been swimming since she was little. Her summers were spent with relatives at Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beach, once-bustling Black resorts that attracted performers like Billie Holiday, Little Richard, and Stevie Wonder. Now 60, Wynn lives near the former beaches, mostly developed into condos. A five-acre remnant was suddenly saved for a park this spring, however, thanks to 15 years of efforts by the Chesapeake Conservancy and Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation.

At the start of the pandemic, as pools shuttered, Wynn “missed swimming” so much she joined a die-hard tribe practicing in the Hillsmere creek. Jerry Frentsos, a 56-year-old Masters Swimmer and coach, lives across from the dock and wanted to offer others a place to continue their laps. He likes to joke, “When the world closed down, I opened up my front yard.” 

Frentsos’ swim group practices year-round, pushing past dead cicadas and icy spots, focused on an intense workout. But in summertime, they’re far from alone, as more people discover endurance sports like triathlons and marathon swimming—and water that’s markedly less polluted. 

Even lifelong swimmer Frentsos is surprised. When he moved to Hillsmere in 2001, Frentsos recalls: “Nobody had any confidence in the water quality. You couldn’t see five inches down.” 

Nowadays, the success of Bay cleanup efforts can be seen in the growing number of waterways safe for swimming. At Duvall Creek, harmful bacteria levels have dropped, and the water is often so clear that Frentsos can spot oyster shells amid leaves on the bottom. 

Yet as interest in active recreation surges, so have prices of the waterfront homes along Maryland’s shoreline—doubling and even tripling in recent years. In Bay Ridge, once an unpretentious summer colony, one of the original cottages, updated with an addition and pool house, recently went on the market for $5.7 million. Hillsmere still has middle-class homes away from the water. But almost all its modest 1950s homes along Duvall Creek and the South River have been expensively rebuilt.

Locals fret about such “Hamptonization,” saying wealthy newcomers don’t always share previous generations’ more relaxed sensibilities about water access. Bay Ridge, for instance, once welcomed out-of-town beachgoers with lifeguards and tiki huts. Today, parking is prohibited, and even on the hottest days, the white-sand shore can be deserted. (The neighboring beach, at the Bay Foundation headquarters, is also gated off except when rented for weddings.) 

In theory, anyone can wade in Maryland waterways up to the high-tide point. Practically, though, that only works for boaters who can splash ashore. Getting to the water is much harder for families like Sandy’s, as she discovered once Hillsmere hired a gate guard for its beach parking lot. Other waterfront communities call the police to ticket those who dare linger.

Anne Mackechnie, a neighbor of Frentsos, understands the friction. Growing up in Eastport, she loved the ease of summer days splashing in the Bay. Yet living in Hillsmere, she sympathizes with homeowners near the beach, who tired of the traffic and litter left behind by non-residents. She pays $274 in annual homeowner fees and want to see the fragile shore protected. “We just had a lot of people coming,” she says, “and it became a nuisance.” 

Some of Frentsos’ neighbors complained when as many as 20 swimmers began pulling up two years ago. But as time passed, his act of pandemic solidarity has inspired something lost at times amid arguments over every sliver of shorefront: simple neighborliness.

On this wintry Saturday, one neighbor after another stops to chat as Frentsos builds a fire, critical for the swimmers to warm up after their frigid exercise. Dog walkers wave. Mackechnie commiserates about the wind chill. And an elderly man lingers at the dock, watching in awe.

For now, with no summer kayak or even a lone osprey in sight, the swimmers have the muddy-green water to themselves. Their splashes fade around the bend. And the creek settles into stillness, once more undisturbed.