A petroleum industry perspective on federal coastal zone management

Abstract

The Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) is one of the first experiments in federal land use planning and part of the recent trend to transfer powers to the states traditionally reserved in the federal domain. Two of the most ambitious provisions of this Act— national interest in facility planning and siting and federal consistency with approved state programs—created a new partnership between states and the federal government.

The aspect of this partnership that most concerns the petroleum industry is federal consistency which allows state coastal management policies to assume the force of federal law by virtue of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) approval of state coastal zone management programs. Moreover, the complex federal consistency procedures under CZMA are counterproductive to the expressed purpose of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act amendments (OCSLA), i.e., expediting OCS development. As a result, the requirement for state‐level federal consistency determinations in the OCS should be eliminated.

The petroleum industry's secondary concern is NOAA's changes in its interpretations of the Act and its regulations in order to allow the approval of state programs based on inadequate state statutory and regulatory frameworks. This has occurred where states do not provide for adequate consideration of the national interest and are unwilling to adopt stronger oversight control over local land‐use decisions as required by the CZMA.

The Coastal Zone Management Act can be made to work, but strong Congressional reaffirmation of the intent of the national‐interest provision is needed to redirect NOAA in its implementation of the Act.

Notes

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the American Petroleum Institute.