Coastal Management Case Study

national coastal zone management program was necessary.
By the late 1960s several northeastern states had developed regulatory programs designed to limit further destruction of marshland and California was carrying out an intense debate about creating a coastal management program. In 1969 North Carolina had passed its own act regulating dredging and filling of coastal salt marshes. A realization clearly emerged from these regulatory efforts and studies that coastal management problems could not be resolved with a local and piece-meal approach. A national effort, accompanied by comprehensive efforts by states, was necessary.
In 1969 a coastal zone management bill was introduced in the Senate, followed shortly by legislation on the same

The act is permissive in the sense that it does not require the individual states to implement the act and provides no sanctions for a failure to participate. However, in a defaulting state the requirements of the act were to be carried out by the federal government. Moreover, the act does provide incentives to the states in the form of grants to support the development of a state program and, perhaps more important, includes a provision that when a state plan is approved, after full consultation with affected federal agencies, those agencies must administer their programs in a manner consistent with the state plan (a so-called “federal consistency provision”). With these “car-rots” as inducement, all coastal states (including states with Great Lake shorelines) eventually participated. In developing its plan, a state is required to: define the boundary of its coastal zone; inventory its legal management authorities; define permissible uses in its coastal zone; describe and define “areas of particular concern; describe the organization of its program; provide for public participation and intergovernmental involvement in development of the plan; and carry out appropriate con-sultation with all affected federal

In 1969 the General Assembly passed both an act regulating dredging and filling in coastal marshes and a bill requiring study of development of a management plan for the state’s coastal area and of the means for its implementation. William Turner, Secretary of the Department of Administration, appointed a “Blue Ribbon” panel to carry out the study. The panel was chaired by Leigh Hammond, one of Turner’s Assistant Secretaries, and included, among others, members of Turner’s own staff, Tom Linton, the Director of the Division of Marine Fisheries in C&D who was responsible for administering the new dredge and fill act, and Milton Heath from the Institute of Government at UNC who had drafted several important pieces of environmental legislation. There was some unseemly squabbling between Administration and C&D over which should be the lead agency in development and ultimate administration of the plan. This continued through-out Scott’s administration, due largely to the fact that Turner and Scott were close and most efforts of a long-range planning nature were delegated to Administration. This friction disappeared once Scott went out of office and NER, because of its statutory authority to manage most coastal resources, became the lead