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July 23, 2007

Digging for change | Chad Coffin takes time away from the flats to lead the new Maine Clammers Association to Augusta

By Taylor Smith

Chad Coffin has clammed in Freeport for nearly 20 years. It doesn't matter if it's during the dim hours before dawn or under the blazing noonday sun, if it's low tide, Coffin's out there digging. And he wants to keep it that way.

That's why Coffin, when he's not out on the mud flats, is working the phones and collating newsletters to organize the state's clamming industry, which he says in recent years has had to contend with stiffer rules about where they can dig for clams. As president of the new Maine Clammers Association, Coffin's goal is to empower clammers to change the industry regulations that hinder them. Priority number one is the Maine Department of Marine Resources' practice of closing mud flats to the state's shellfish workers. "The biggest thing is access to our resource," he says. "We want to give a more united voice to the clammers of the state."

The MCA was founded in May after Coffin and other clammers in the Freeport and Brunswick areas gathered to discuss the state's water-testing methods, which they complained have become increasingly rigid. Worse, clammers felt handcuffed because they couldn't affect proposed flat closures, says Coffin. "There's no mechanism in place for a public hearing or a rule change [with the DMR]," he says.

But since forming the group, Coffin and a growing band of supporters have traveled along Maine's coast from Scarborough to Roque Bluffs, meeting with clammers and spreading the strength-in-numbers gospel. Coffin recently sent the 100 or so MCA members postcards pitching the association and a four-page newsletter, which included a summary of LD 1318, a successful bill sponsored by Rep. David Webster (D-Freeport) to audit the DMR's water-quality testing practices.

LD 1318 passed easily through the House and Senate earlier this year and was signed by Gov. John Baldacci in mid-June. Three months earlier, the governor signed a companion bill, LD 403, to increase municipal incentives to control shoreline pollution affecting the mud flats clammers work.

While those bills enjoyed plenty of political support, Coffin says passing them required a big grassroots effort to bring clammers from up and down Maine's coast to Augusta this spring for a legislative hearing on the DMR's water-testing process.

For Coffin, 36, politics is a new adventure. As a full-time clammer, Coffin is used to leading a life very much out of the public eye, his days governed by the four or five hours of decent clamming conditions around each low tide. "Clamming gives you an economic vehicle to drop out of society," he says.

But today's modern clammer can't just focus on the tides in Maquoit Bay or the Medomak River in Waldoboro. Watching what's happening in Augusta may be just as important as paying attention to the tide chart for clammers hoping to protect jobs with annual incomes between $60,000 and $70,000.

Meanwhile, Coffin, who is also chair of the Freeport Shellfish Commission, says clammers slowly have begun working with one another to treat mud flats as a resource that needs their careful management. Coffin says clammers have adopted self-imposed rules to protect the flats' bounty, like limiting early-season clamming days and talking with local landowners about pollution. But those efforts weren't easy to start. "It was like pulling teeth," he says. "Nobody wants to be restricted — it's kind of like the Wild West."

Losing a bit of independence may sting, but Coffin says the state of clamming in Maine has reached a critical point, with many flats closed by the DMR for years at a time and fewer clammers able to make a living digging. In Freeport, there are 51 licensed clammers compared with more than 70 just 10 years ago. "Things are at an all-time low, I'd say," he says. "Not having a voice in Augusta has allowed this to happen."

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