On most New Hampshire lakes the line you clear around is 250 feet, the state shoreland line. In New Durham it’s 300. The town’s Shorefront Conservation Overlay reaches 300 feet inland from Merrymeeting Lake, every other pond over ten acres, and the Cocheco, Merrymeeting and Ela Rivers. So the first thing we do on a New Durham waterfront lot isn’t start a saw. It’s figure out which line we’re standing behind.
Merrymeeting Lake is the one most people mean. Twelve hundred acres of spring-fed water, three miles from the dam at the west end to an eastern shore that’s still hard to reach by road. Most of the shoreline is built. Through the 1980s it was mostly plain summer camps; plenty of those came down in the ’90s and bigger second homes went up in their place, and that cycle hasn’t stopped. Teardowns on old camp lots are a good share of the clearing work up there. Tight lots, big pines, a neighbor twenty feet off.
Inside the overlay the state and town rules stack. RSA 483-B still governs cutting in the 250 feet the Shoreland Act covers, and the town ordinance adopts the state’s 50-foot natural waterfront buffer by reference. On top of that, buildings sit back 75 feet, leach fields 125, and no more than 20 percent of the lot can end up under roof, driveway and patio combined. Clearing more ground than the house needs buys you nothing when the hard surface is capped.
Off the water there’s still a trigger to watch. New Durham’s stormwater article counts clearing trees as a disturbance of the land. On an existing lot, open up more than 2,000 square feet of gentle ground — or more than 500 on a slope between 15 and 30 percent — and the erosion-control requirements kick in. That isn’t a big clearing. A house pad and a drive will do it.
If your lot is within 300 feet of Merrymeeting Lake or one of New Durham’s three named rivers, send us the plot plan before we walk it. The lines decide the job.
We flag before we fell. The reference line, the 50-foot buffer, the 75-foot building setback, the 300-foot overlay edge — on a Merrymeeting lot those can all land inside one modest backyard, and paint on bark is cheaper than a stop-work order. Trees in the buffer that are staying get marked off the shoreland permit plan, not picked by whoever happens to be in the cab.
Old camp lots mean hand work and small machines near the water. Stumps in the buffer stay in the ground; the roots hold the bank and the duff soaks up what comes off the roof. Back at the house site the stumps come out and the pad gets stripped to mineral soil. Slash gets chipped and hauled off, not piled where the next storm can float it into the lake.
The rivers catch people off guard. The Merrymeeting, the Cocheco and the Ela are all named in the overlay, so a wooded lot along one of them can carry the same 300-foot obligations as a lake camp without anybody ever calling it waterfront. We check the map either way. Takes ten minutes.
Wooded clearing in New Durham runs $3,000–$8,000 per acre with trees, stumps and grubbing included. Open back-lot ground away from the water comes in near the bottom. Tight Merrymeeting camp lots, where the work near the shore goes slow, small and partly by hand, run toward the top. Firm number after we’ve walked it.
Because the town added its own. The state Shoreland Act covers 250 feet from the reference line. New Durham’s Shorefront Conservation Overlay runs 300 feet inland on lakes and ponds over ten acres and on the Cocheco, Merrymeeting and Ela Rivers. Where the two conflict, the stricter rule applies, so we plan to the town’s line.
No. The ordinance keeps a natural waterfront buffer within 50 feet of the reference line, following RSA 483-B, and caps impervious surface at 20 percent of the lot inside the overlay. You can thin, and you can open a footpath. A bare lawn running down to the shore isn’t on the menu.
Yes. The town’s stormwater article defines a disturbance as any time soil, sand, gravel or rock is exposed, and it names clearing of trees and vegetation outright. On an existing lot, more than 2,000 square feet on gentle ground, or 500 on slopes between 15 and 30 percent, brings in erosion-control requirements.
In New Durham they do. The overlay names the Cocheco, Merrymeeting and Ela Rivers specifically, along with every lake and pond larger than ten acres. A wooded lot along one of those rivers carries the same 300-foot overlay as a camp on Merrymeeting Lake, even if nobody ever listed it as waterfront.
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