The earthquake/tsunami crisis in Japan is a wake up call for all coastal communities.

I have made the case in a video blog http://vimeo.com/21824508

For American the lesson is that these phenomena are real. The second is that the United States is just as vulnerable as Japan especially the Pacific Northwest - Oregon and Washington State in particular. The third lesson is that American states, governments, and people are less well prepared than the Japanese were and we saw what a terrible catastrophe happened there even WITH all the preparation.

You can post your comments on the video site. at VIMEO. Thanks.

Steffen Schmidt and Paul Schmidt, Instructors

Alaska CZM Issues 2011 - Remember that many CZM laws "sunset." That means that even if there are laws they go away after a designated period of time!

Steffen Schmidt

Prof of CZM

"Coastal zone management changes emerged as a major issue late in the 2010 session and will appear again in January. The proposal the North Slope Borough and some other coastal communities is pushing is to restore the program to something like it was before former Gov. Frank Murkowski brought the program under the control of the state Department of Natural Resources.

Previously communities along the coast had more ability to influence state decisions on development permits, which they argue has been lost now that the coastal management program is operated under the state DNR.

"I can't tell you where we'll be on it," Chenault told the RDC. "I know that my stance is the state can't give up its sovereignty anywhere."

Bills making those changes offered last year by Sen. Donny Olson, D-Nome, and Rep. Reggie Joule, D-Kotzebue, were strongly opposed by Parnell, who argued the legislation would have essentially given coastal communities the right to control state permitting decisions that affect development of state lands.

One area where state officials have dug in their heels is giving coastal municipalities or communities any authority to veto or change air or water quality permits issued by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Since the state issues these permits under guidelines of the federal Clean Air and Clean Water laws and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, any involvement of other entities in the approvals would complicate the permitting process, state Commissioner of Environmental Conservation Larry Hartig told legislators last year.

On the other hand, the clean air and water permit approvals are the kind of decisions coastal communities like the North Slope Borough want to be involved with.

The issue is almost certain to be joined again in the 2011 session. This is also the year in which the coastal management program sunsets, unless the Legislature extends it. Given that, some form of legislation is likely to pass. The question is whether it will be a simple extension of the current program or whether a substantial change will be made."

http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/011611/new_770957860.shtml

The "Fishing for Energy Partnership." Removing Marine and Coastal Debris!

Now here is a great idea for reducing marine debris caused by the fishing industry!

Basically here is what's going down ...

"Moss Landing Harbor will be the first harbor in California to join the Fishing for Energy initiative on December 9th. A day-long collection will be held, providing commercial fishermen a cost-free way to recycle old and unusable fishing gear. Gear collected at the harbor will be stripped of metals for recycling at Schnitzer Steel and processed into clean, renewable energy at the Covanta Stanislaus Energy-from-Waste facility in Crows Landing, CA."

We have talked about this issue in the past and several of my students in the "Coastal and Ocean Debris Science" seminar have suggested that we need to initiate major land-based recycling and disposal facilities and programs fora variety of products that now contribute to marine flotsam and coastal debris. Well, this project is a great example of how you can build coalitions for win-win projects to accomplish this!

"Fishing for Energy is a partnership between Covanta Energy (Covanta), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, and Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc. It was established in 2008 to reduce the financial burden imposed on commercial fishermen when disposing of old, derelict (gear that is lost in the marine environment), or unusable fishing gear and thereby reduce the amount of gear that may inadvertently end up in U.S. coastal waters."

You can find out more from a solid article in PR Newswire.

The other good web site to visit for much more information is at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Marine and coastal debris and flotsam is rising as perhaps the number one issue (after climate change) of concern to Coastal Zone Managers and students of coastal and marine issues. It is an alarming problem and yet one that lends itself for public support because garbage (which this is to a large extent) is something everyone understands! Also, as this program proves, private business is interested and willing to participate more and more in these types of initiatives because it is great PR, good "green" behavior, and gives excellent community and media good-will to corporations. Once they are on board it also becomes easier to pressure governments and leaders to support debris and flotsam projects because now the pressure is no longer coming from "tree kissers" but also from solid corporate supporters! (No disrespect to my fellow tree kissers, we started making the public and politicians aware of the dangers of pollution and marine/coastal debris!)

I have made this point several times and this news is just proof of the fact that I was right.

So going forward lets keep working on debris projects, learning from smart campaigns and coalitions such as this one.

Steffen Schmidt, PhD.
Professor of Coastal Zone Management and Policy

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Are there partisan differences between democrats and republicans on the environment (and by proxy) on coastal policy?

The article "A Widening Gap: Republican and Democratic Views on Climate Change" by Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright offers and excellent and very comprehensive study of this divergence. Environment, Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, September/October 2008.

They point out that, "historically, support for environmental protection in the United States has been relatively nonpartisan. Republicans have pointed with pride to Theodore Roosevelt’s crucial role in promoting the conservation of natural resources by establishing national parks and forests, and Democrats have applauded Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to include conservation as part of the New Deal via the Soil Conservation Service and related programs."

This bipartisan support for the environment however, has undergone a major change.

"The situation began to change in the early 1980s, as the Reagan administration labeled environmental regulations a burden on the economy and tried to weaken them and reduce their enforcement. While this stimulated a temporary backlash from environmentalists and much of the public during Reagan’s first term, the “Reagan Revolution,” based on the theme that “government is the problem, not the solution,” provided electoral success for the Republican Party for a quarter century. The antienvironmental orientation of the Republican Party became salient again following the Newt Gingrich–led Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, sparking a modest negative reaction from the public, and has been greatly amplified during the George W. Bush administration but with little discernible political cost—probably because the war on terror and the Iraq war have until recently dominated the policy agenda. A consequence of these trends has been a growing divide along party lines over environmental protection, among other government programs."

What are the consequences of the Republican victory in the 2010 elections in the House of Representatives and state races as well as the accompanying weakening of the Obama administration?

The New York Times put it this way, "The Obama administration and the new Congress appear headed for early confrontations over the reach of environmental regulation and federal subsidies for fossil fuel development." New York Times, Nov 3, 2010.

While climate change is not the only coastal policy issue it is a proxy for understanding the tense dance that will occur between the GOP and the Democrats on all issues such as this.

The probable new Republican speaker of the House, John A. Boehner of Ohio, has " ... dismissed the idea that carbon dioxide is affecting the climate and has characterized cap and trade and other proposed solutions to global warming as job-killing energy taxes."

The Tea Party and conservative Republicans (are there any that are still moderate or liberal?!) are uniformly against such regulations. They may also move to reduce the regulation of the oil industry, revisit fishing quotas, building on the coast, and many other measures that are of interest to us as CZM experts and students.

For those of us who "do" coastal policy the p;roper perspective going forward is top now look at the policy environment in a much more segmented way. We nee to examine issues state by state, by "meta issues," and sector by sector.

State by Sate. In the sweep of Republicans into office California stands out as a maverick. Californians defeated Proposition 23, which the oil-industry-sponsored. It was an effort " ... to gut the state’s landmark global warming law that will set strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions and create a trading system for pollution permits. California voters also re-elected the Democrat Barbara Boxer to the Senate and returned a Democrat, Jerry Brown, to the governor’s office — both strong supporters of state and federal action on climate change." New York Times

Clearly there is a big opportunity for voters and leaders at the state and local level to take advantage of federalism and design policies that are popular, necessary and doable at those levels even while the federal government may be retrenching.

Meta Issues

In addition to the geocentric decentralization of policy we also will see many coastal policy opportunities revolving around specific strategies which can bring together stakeholders and create new useful alliances.

There are several models advocated by clusters of scientists, politicians and policymakers including:

1. Allowing market forces to resolve some of these problems

2. Regulating and reducing pollution and emissions as well as highly regulating construction on the coasts

3. Using geoengineering such as, "Pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, as volcanoes do, is the most well established way to block the sun. Other proposals call for brightening clouds over the oceans by lofting sea salt into the atmosphere and building a sunscreen in space." Scientific American, November, 2008

Sector by Sector.

Finally sector interests can be brought together to address coastal sectors such as fishing, recreation, tourism and hospitality, alternative energy, conservation, shipping and port facilities, recreational boating and marinas, reef conservation and the diving industry, etc.

So the 2010 election brought significant changes to the American political landscape. The Republicans and the Tea Party conservatives are significantly less "environmental" than the Democrats.offer new opportunities for creative science and policy making focused on the coastal zones of the United States.

The new political environment at the local, state, and federal level in the United States may require new and different strategies for addressing coastal zone management and coastal policy. It's likely that the federal government will be much less activist that many had expected when Al Gore argued the case and when Barak Obama was elected president.

Steffen Schmidt

Professor of Coastal Policy

Video below. Is this REALLY a coastal zone?! Yes it is. Drive south from Hollywood Beach, Florida on route A1A and you will see the extremes to which we go in developing our beaches and barrier islands. The beach is on the other side of these buildings. There is almost no public access. the coast has been privatized.

What coastal policy is appropriate here?

The BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: Are You getting Mad yet?


Read the full article and access the video at Insider Iowa.com Reprinted here courtesy of InsiderIowa.com.

I have been teaching and lecturing about coastal zones for over ten years. I am an affiliate of the Nova University Oceanographic Center and am currently working on a national project to help students understand climate science better. I am also an avid scuba diver and sailor.

So when the BP oil platform exploded and the disaster of a month ago began to unfold in front of us I was very distressed.

But I was not surprised.

We have been putting the world’s coastal areas, beaches and oceans through the wringer for at least a century and a half.

In my coastal policy class http://www.coastalpolicy.org I use “Ocean’s End” by Colin Woodard. Although a few years old, it is a terrific but very depressing book about the disasters we have wrought in the Black Sea (almost dead and infested with deadly jellyfish), the coral reefs of Belize (stressed by runoff, overuse, fertilizer from golf courses), the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico (a “dead Zone” from fertilizer and pesticide runoff from farms and fields in almost every state upstream, and the banks of Newfoundland overfished to the point of virtual extinction. In Newfoundland the lobsters were the size of pigs and sailors could almost walk to shore on the water there were so many giant cod in the ocean.

It’s not as if we have not been aware for years that the “… stresses piled up: overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution, wetland destruction, the introduction of alien species,” as Woodard writes about the Black Sea.

I wanted to share this with you because if the Gulf of Mexico BP explosion “accident” as Rand Paul, Tea Part candidate for the Senate from Kentucky, recently called it, were an unexpected and shocking event we could chalk it off to experience.

It was not unexpected. It is just one more in an unending and growing series of abuses we have been heaping on the beaches, coastal marshes, wetland and oceans of the Earth for about two centuries.

I remember as a kid when they filled in most of the huge marsh the “Cienega de Santa Marta,” Colombia. They left a small outlet like a culvert so seawater could enter and leave. However the magnificent marsh and all its sea life and birds soon died and turned into a fetid, sewer and trash infested dump. I saw the exact same in Cuba on the way back to Havana. Of course we landfill almost anything we can lay our hands on here in the U.S. Have you ever been to the Ashley riverfront in Charleston, SC? It’s all landfill.

So I wanted to share a great talk with you in this column. It is by Jeremy Jackson. He is “the Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Painting pictures of changing marine environments, particularly coral reefs and the Isthmus of Panama, Jackson's research captures the extreme environmental decline of the oceans that has accelerated in the past 200 years.” From TED

The following short talk is used with permission from TED Conferences, LLC (they provided the embedding code of Dr Jackson’s talk.) I hope you enjoy it and realize that we are moving in a precarious direction with our valuable natural assets. We all need to become stewards of what nature or if you are a believer, what God has given us. We need a serious and robust push back against Sara Palin who said again this week that she’s a big fan of offshore drilling and Rush Limbaugh who is a real threat to the future of wildlife, clean water, and all things natural in this nation.

I always find it incomprehensible how hunters and fishing aficionados can continue to also be “dittoheads” (Limbaugh acolytes) apparently serenely unaware that the places they love all around them are being defiled and ravaged by unsound, destructive practices. You will see some comments by viewers of the Jackson talk on the TED site that startlingly reflect this “ostrich syndrome.” (We see it in Iowa with declining pheasant populations and the disappearance of barn owls and other wildlife and yet no public awareness or action to reverse that trend the reason for which any monkey knows).

I am tired of the argument that business is business and we should leave them alone to do their business. I don’t want them doing their business in MY oceans, MY beaches, MY fisheries, MY flyways/migration routes, and MY wetlands anymore!

And I’m starting to get really, really mad! I hope you are too.
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New Administrator of NOAA

Dr. Jane Lubchenco was nominated by President Elect Barak Obama as the Administrator of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is devoted to conserving marine and coastal resources and monitoring weather. Obama said "as an internationally known environmental scientist, ecologist and former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Jane has advised the President and Congress on scientific matters, and I am confident she will provide passionate and dedicated leadership at NOAA."

Thus begins a new phase in marine and coastal policy.

For me as a professor of coastal policy and for my students around the world this appointment is interesting for several reasons.

First, this appointment once again emphasizes the importance of politics in the design and conduct of marine and coastal policy. As we know from foreign policy, a president can profoundly influence the shape and nature of policymaking with the choices of leaders.

Second, both President Obama and Dr. Lubchenco understand the significance of many of the issues my students and I deal with on a day-to-day basis:

reducing overfishing, eliminate destructive methods for fishing, slowing down and reversing the overall polluting of the coastal areas and oceans, halting the acidification of oceans, smart-planning in future coastal construction, working with agriculture and other sectors in greatly cutting back on nitrate pollution and the resulting "Dead Zones", addressing the impact of climate change (especially warming of ocean temperatures) on reefs and other marine life.

This greater knowledge and empathy for the marine environment makes it much more likely that we will be investing in more aggressive science and policy implementation to reverse the destructive impact of human activity on fragile coastal and ocean ecosystems.

Third, I strongly believe that this national emphasis will have consequences at the state, country and local levels in terms of more emphasis on protection, preservation, conservation, and remediation of the coastal zone in all of AMERICA'S COASTAL STATES.

Fourth, this renewed vigor will produce new and exciting job and career opportunities for my students at all levels of government but also with private consulting and engineering firms that work with coastal infrastructure and coastal environments.

Fifth and finally, this renewed US energy and emphasis on oceans and coasts will inevitably trigger more interest and more action across the globe. International coastal zone science and management should gradually see a sharp increase in emphasis as well as funding and career opportunities. This is a very crucial moment for American scientists and institutions to increase their contacts and partnerships with colleagues, students, and institutions in other countries in the areas of marine and coastal research and education.

I have prepared and sent President elect Obama whom I met during the Iowa Caucus activities in the hectic primary season of 2007, a short briefing paper on coastal policy. I hope and assume that some of my specific suggestions will work their way into the Obama administration and NOAA agenda for the next eight years.

This is without a doubt a critically important and also more optimistic time for all of us concerned about and working on improving life by the sea, on the sea, and under the sea.

Breach of Faith?

The story from AP is sympromatic of what is happening in the coastal zones of the the United States>

Cape Cod town says no to filling barrier

August 1, 2007

"CHATHAM, Mass. --Opting to let nature take its course, residents overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to borrow $4.1 million to plug a widening breach on Nauset Beach that could threaten oceanfront homes.

The breach has grown to nearly 1,000 feet wide since it was blasted open by a fierce April [2007] storm. The beach forms a natural barrier that prevents the ocean from encroaching on the Chatham mainland."

The story goes on to explain that "About 600 residents attended a special Town Meeting Tuesday on the issue, which was seen as pitting wealthier owners of seaside homes -- many of them seasonal residents -- against permanent residents who faced higher property taxes to fill the breach. Voters rejected a plan that called for pouring hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand into the inlet created by the breach."

This is one of the first concrete cases where a voter's rebellion against beach renourishment and other artificial and costly human "interventions" on the beach/Coastal zone has ben reported.

Surprisingly the voters also rejected a proposal to spend $150,000 on a study of the long-term impact the breach will have on the coastline.

Ted Keon, the town's coastal resources director, the AP reported, " ... was surprised voters rejected the study, which he said would create a "road map" for local officials in the future.

Officials and scientists will continue to monitor the breach and do the best they can to protect public and private interests, Keon said."

The news story was accompanied by paid advertisements on Boston.com in a typical Internet/Google disconnect that read: "Cape Cod Waterfront, View 700+ Waterfront Properties From $24,900 to $15.5 million www.PropertyCapeCod.com"