Save the Bay's presence in Newport is growing. How a new agreement with the city will help

A new deal with the city of Newport could help Save The Bay expand its educational harbor tours into the summer months as the organization also works to finish its new aquarium at the Gateway Center.

“We’ll be in a situation where we’ll be able to take students directly from the aquarium to the boats,” said Katy Dorchies Nutini, Save The Bay’s director of communications and marketing. “That just helps us open up a whole new realm of opportunity for the kind of programming we can do.”

At its regular meeting last Wednesday, the Newport City Council approved a new $15,000 annual license agreement with Save The Bay, a nonprofit dedicated to the education and conservation of Narragansett Bay, to give the vessels it uses for harbor seal tours and school excursions overnight dockage at Perotti Park.

The five-year agreement specifies that one vessel is allowed exclusive dockage on the north side of “A Dock” at Perotti Park from May 1 through Oct. 31 and up to two vessels are allowed exclusive overnight dockage on the North and South sides of “D Dock” from Nov. 1 to April 30. It also allows Save The Bay to set up a temporary station to sell tickets and check in passengers from Nov. 1 to April 30.

Save The Bay’s main use of their vessels in Newport Harbor is to host Harbor Seal tours in the winter and taking school children out on exploration trips to learn more about Narragansett Bay and its environment. They also take students out on summer camp trips.

Before the agreement, Dorchies Nutini said the organization had a day-to-day docking agreement with Bowen’s Wharf only for their winter seal tours, so if they wanted to take students somewhere during the summer, they would have to briefly dock at a local public dock to board and deboard. When they do school trips, it's typically out of Providence. They do take Newport students out to the harbor, Dorchies Nutini said, but because they only had dockage seasonally, they had to time these trips more strategically.

Dorchies Nutini said having year-round dockage in Perrotti Park will give the organization an opportunity to expand its educational programs, especially for Newport students.

“It’s not so much that we’re doing something new, more that we’re looking to do more of the great education work and create more of the amazing experiential outings that we’re already doing,” Dorchies Nutini said.

During the City Council meeting, Newport Harbormaster Stephen Land explained the sole vessel using A Dock, the most southern dock at Perrotti Park, is the Block Island Ferry, which docks on the south side of the dock. The north side, however, goes unused, as do both sides of D Dock from Nov. 1 through May 1. D Dock sits behind the “northern gazebo” at Perrotti Park and is typically used by Oldport Marine Services to operate the Newport Harbor Shuttle. Land said keeping these docks filled year-round helps keep revenue flowing into the harbor.

“(This agreement) continues the Harbor’s efforts to promote access to the water,” Land said. “That is the core of why I’m here to promote access for everyone to the water.”

Councilor Charlie Holder questioned the use of the exclusive agreement for seal tour “excursions,” as it says in the agreement because the city’s harbor ordinance specifies the Perrotti Park docks restrict use to “ferry service, cruise ship service, and harbor shuttle service,” vessels. City Solicitor Christopher Behan advised the council there could possibly be a need to tweak the ordinance to fit the agreement. The City Council also changed the language of the contract itself from excursions to “educational marine science trips” and “educational seal tours.”

Additionally, Councilor David Carlin asked Land to clarify information he received from Oldport Marine Services which argued the federal funding used to create and maintain these docks only allows dockage for vessels licensed by the Public Utilities Commission, the state body responsible for monitoring public passenger boats like ferries. Land said his research into the issue revealed there is nothing in writing saying that and the council which approved Perrotti Park’s docks intended for them to be used by ferries, shuttles, intermodal vessels, rescue vessels and education vessels.

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“I’m going to support all access (to the water) for all different companies out of Perrotti Park, out of Ann Street, I think it's really, incredibly important,” Land said. “I work on a boat all day long, I forget how awesome it is to step on a boat and go into Newport Harbor, so it's something that’s really on my mind and on my staff's mind to always keep Newport completely accessible and develop more. We just developed more access points, bringing school-age children having access to this is really incredible.”

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Save the Bay to dock seal tour boats in Newport under new agreement