AUGUSTA – In late summer 2004, Bruce Hoard and his wife drove to Sullivan on a weekday evening to scope out shorefront lots about to go on the market. Within days, the Bangor couple had a new mortgage and 2 acres with a water view perfect for a modest retirement house.

But two years later, Hoard says the couple’s plans have been thrown into chaos by a new state law tripling the required distance between houses and shorebird habitat. Moving the house farther back would all but eliminate the water view that made his property attractive, not to mention valuable, he said.

“I felt like I had been disenfranchised. I felt like my land had been taken,” Hoard told lawmakers on Tuesday. “It seemed un-American.”

That is just one example of the type of emotional story lawmakers will likely hear over and over again in the coming months as they grapple with whether to revise portions of a 7-month-old state law that has created an uproar in some coastal communities.

On Tuesday, members of a legislative committee indicated that the law, which creates a 250-foot buffer around shorebird habitat, may indeed need tweaking to lessen unanticipated impacts on waterfront landowners.

Committee members discussed several options, including grandfathering, or exempting current landowners, or relaxing the setback requirements from areas used by the birds for feeding but not for nesting. They also discussed building more flexibility into the law, which will be revisited during this winter’s legislative session.

But lawmakers also appeared committed to protecting shorebirds that depend on Maine’s undeveloped coastline for survival.

“We are trying to protect the birds in the least onerous way possible,” said Rep. Robert Duchesne, D-Hudson.

Most of the outcry over the new law has emanated from rural Down East communities experiencing a real estate surge. An estimated 17.5 percent of Washington County’s coastline is affected by the shorebird rule.

Officials stressed repeatedly during Tuesday’s meeting that development near shorebird habitat is not prohibited under the new law.

Landowners with shorebird habitat must apply for a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection. Whenever possible, the DEP said it will work with the landowner to relocate the development or make adjustments to minimize the impact.

In the worst-case scenarios, the DEP said it will allow landowners to go forward with the development on the condition that they compensate for the lost habitat by conserving land elsewhere.

The new law is largely intended to protect several species of shorebirds that are not year-round Maine residents, such as black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones and several types of sandturns.

Lindsay Tudor, a biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said many of these birds stop over in Maine to gorge on invertebrates en route from the Arctic or sub-Arctic to South America.

Failure to fatten up enough – whether because of lack of food or burning too many calories by fleeing human disturbance – can mean death to the birds, she said.

“They are in trouble,” Tudor said. “These are species that need all of the help they can get at this time.”

A Maine Audubon representative and others supported Tudor’s testimony.

Officials with the DIFW as well as the Department of Environmental Protection said Tuesday they would be willing to consider reducing the setback from shorebird feeding and staging areas. They said the setback should remain at 250 feet for roosting areas, however.

Those changes would reduce the number of affected acres from 30,000 to 10,000 while still enhancing protections for the birds, officials said.

“Nobody has twisted our arms. We think this is an appropriate balance,” said Mark Stadler, head of DIFW’s wildlife program.

Representatives of the real estate and banking industries said keeping the status quo could have dramatic impacts on their respective industries. Lending institutions, for example, may be forced to seek additional capital from borrowers whose land was suddenly devalued because of the bill.

Lawmakers appeared most moved by the testimony of Hoard and other property owners, however. Several lawmakers said they would like to see the committee examine grandfathering current landowners from the setback requirements to develop one lot on their land.

Rep. Ted Koffman, a Bar Harbor Democrat who is the current committee co-chairman, said he might be willing to support either grandfathering or reducing the setback, but probably not both options.

But several Washington County residents urged the committee to scrap the law, which they continued to describe as a state ban on development despite lawmakers’ assertions otherwise.

Carl Bragg, who has 2,000 acres affected by the new law, called it the “largest public land taking in the history of the state.” Bragg pledged to continue fighting the measure that he said has “devastated” Down East communities.

With new lawmakers being sworn in on Dec. 6, however, the current committee members said they would pass on in writing the options discussed Tuesday for the next session to consider.