Wicomico County bill looks to protect local commercial seafood operations

WICOMICO CO., Md – A new bill that recently passed in the Wicomico County Council looks to protect local commercial seafood operations.

Legislative Bill 2025-04 looks to establish those commercial seafood operations as protected under the “Right to Farm” act.

This would allow commercial seafood operations to conduct business without fear of legislation being made to hinder its business.

County Councilman James Winn, who created the bill, says this bill protects the county’s waterman and seafood operations.

“Wherever you go to pick up crabs or oysters or anywhere, there might be flies so if you build a house next to one of these wholesalers that sells seafood and you complain about the flies, this seafood ordinance will protect those businesses, so this is legislation that protects our local waterman and seafood companies,” said Winn.

Winn said this legislation is also important because we have an aging population of watermen – with not many to replace them.

“We need something that is going to say we respect and as a county, want to protect our natural resources that we have in Wicomico County and if we don’t have this ordinance in place, it’s going to increase the number of watermen phasing out of the industry,” said Winn.

Somerset County has passed a similar ordinance to that of Wicomico County.

The legislation now heads to the County Executive’s desk to be signed into law.