When the DNR proposed regulations in June that would allow private recreational docks in coastal waterways to be up to 1,000 feet long and 6 feet wide, scores of comments flowed into the agency’s inbox opposing the size as too large. 

The Coastal Resources Division responded not by heeding those concerns, but by proposing even larger docks. The agency suggested extending the length to 1,500 feet with no hard limit on length if a variance was requested. 

The Coastal Committee of the DNR board last month heard this proposal and agreed to most of it, though it pulled back on the variance length. Its draft, now out for public comment, would allow dock walkways up to 1,500 feet long and six feet wide. Docks up to 1,650 feet long would be allowed with a variance.

In public comments during the August meeting, Courtney Reich of the Georgia Conservancy said the proposed rules “diverged so entirely from DNR’s previous focus on marsh protection and public access that it tends to defy logic.” 

“Based on numerous comments received by the Georgia DNR on the last draft, and the lack of scientific foundation, we found it difficult to understand why these changes were actually made in the form you’re looking at,” she said. 

Alice Keyes, of One Hundred Miles, tried to impress on the board just how big these docks would be.

“What does the footprint of a six to eight bedroom home, two city of Savannah squares, and 60 parked cars all have in common? It’s not really a joke, but each of those total 9,000 square feet,” she said. “That’s the square footage of a walkway that is 1,500 feet long and six feet wide. Fifteen hundred feet is also the equivalent to the height of one and a half Eiffel Towers, and is longer than the Sears or Willis Tower is tall.”

In written public comments sent to CRD, Georgians overwhelmingly supported limits on the size of docks built over the state-owned salt marsh, Keyes said.

The Current GA analyzed the 103 unique comments CRD received (we eliminated comments that were uploaded to the file more than once) and found 84 opposed the originally proposed 1,000-foot-long and six-foot-wide docks as too large. Of those, two-thirds used a form letter provided by One Hundred Miles, at least in part. They included this phrase: 

“I recommend CRD do the following to strengthen the draft rule: 

• Return to the 3,000 square foot maximum for the dockway employed during the previous regulatory process. Allowing 6,000 square feet for the walkway is unnecessary and will only encourage new and existing docks to support golf carts.” 

No summary provided

In briefing the board at the August meeting, Chief of Coastal Management Jill Andrews noted she did not provide them a statistical summary of the comments, but noted “Nobody liked everything, so everything was in some form of opposition.” Still, there was a trend.  

“But just generally speaking, the majority of the comments were concerned about increasing the overall size of the fixed walkway of docks over what the standard had been,” she said. “So that was that increase in dock width.” 

She went on to explain that CRD was recommending the longer, 1,500 foot  walkway and no limit on the length connected to a variance.  But she didn’t explain why. 

Only one commenter, former Chatham County Commissioner Pat Farrell, had suggested the “1,500 foot or longer” length specifically. He did so in a letter dated July 21, 2026, in which he identified himself as a current commissioner, despite having left that post in March in an unsuccessful bid for a Congressional seat.

Farrell was also among six commenters who requested no limit on the variance. The others were McIntosh County Commissioner Davis Poole; former Environmental Protection Division Director Jud Turner, an attorney who represents private landowners in issues related to private recreational docks; Dan Bucey and Alton Brown Jr., senior principals at Resource + Land Consultants, which assists property owners through the process with CRD; and Rick Basinger.

Supporters of the unlimited length suggested the cost of building will curb dock size without regulations. 

“At $450 a foot, cost is going to impact people’s decisions on whether they’re going to build long docks,” Poole told the board. “It gets super expensive super fast, unless you build it yourself, which is still horribly expensive. So I think this will sort of self-maintain itself, if you will.”

But DNR Board Member Jeff Andrews was troubled by the lack of a limit on the variance. 

“How did we just get to a point where we just flung it open like the old West and said, ‘Have at it, just do what you want to do’,” he said. “Because before we had a hard stop, and I think there has to be. You have to control people. If you don’t put a control on people, there’s going to be that one person that ruins it for everybody.” 

Coastal Resources Division Director Doug Haymans told him there had been discussion amongst some board members, legislators, and headquarters staff about the comments. 

“This seemed to be the direction that was approvable by some of those commenters,” Haymans said. “And that’s where it wound up going, an unlimited length. Well, an unlimited variance.” 

While the DNR board sometimes travels to the part of the state where the issue it’s hearing is most relevant, in August it met in Atlanta, about 250 miles from the coast. Of the full 19-member, governor-appointed DNR board, two reside in Coastal Georgia: Nancy A. Addison and Alfred W. “Bill” Jones III. 

The board members did not discuss reducing the 1,500 foot length, despite hearing that neighboring South Carolina limits docks to 1,000 feet. Zachary Hennessee of the Southern Environmental Law Center told the board the docks contemplated in the draft rules are larger than any private docks in the Southeast.

Along with limiting the variance to an additional 10% or 150 feet, the board members removed a proposal to allow a dock to cross a 20-foot stream to reach deeper water. Instead, the new draft regulation now reads “A private dock must terminate at the first waterway measuring 20 feet wide or greater at mean high water.”

The next round of public comment will be accepted until Sept. 30. The DNR board plans to adopt the rules at its Oct. 27 meeting. Read the proposed rule here.