Ocean Study Results Released
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24–The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy presented its final report to Congress this week, calling for an overhaul in the nation’s governance of ocean and coastal regions, which includes greater accountability for regional and state concerns.
The commission delivered its report on Monday, culminating three years of study and 18 visits to coastal regions and ocean sites nationwide, including a series of nine public hearings. Boston was the host of one of these meetings in July 2002.
According to retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the commission chairman, one of the challenges the group recognized early on was the need to bring state and regional needs back into the process at the federal level. “Perhaps the most important change in the final report is our effort to emphasize and to clarify the important role of the state,” he said.
Also, he said, there is a need to simplify the process by which the nation’s coastal regions are governed. “By focusing on state and local needs,” he said, “we saw our mandate as recommending changes in the federal system that will facilitate the collective development of a national ocean policy while lessening bureaucratic roadblocks.”
Currently, a hodgepodge of state and federal agencies has oversight of each coastal region, making it difficult to complete projects without months and even years of approval processes. Furthermore, because there are multiple organizations on the national level that play the same role-but with different regional jurisdictions-there is a lack of cohesiveness from the top and poor communication between regions that may have the same needs.
These “bureaucratic roadblocks” have become very familiar to those at Cape Wind Associates, a Boston-based company which has set its eye on building the nation’s first offshore wind farm five and a half miles off the south shore of Cape Cod.
While there have been strong stances both for and against this proposed project in the past years, the primary hold-up in the authorization process has been due to an ambiguity over which agency has the jurisdiction to make such a decision. It was not until last June that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston decided that the Army Corps of Engineers would have final regulatory oversight.
And the group still faces extensive regulatory review, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said. “Right now, Cape Wind is undergoing a review involving 17 federal and state agencies,” he pointed out. “What we are talking about at this point is a non-polluting, clean energy project.yet it is clear that this clean energy project is already undergoing a tougher review than any of the dirty power plants.”
Gov. Mitt Romney, who has opposed the Cape Wind project, issued a letter to the Ocean Commission in May, saying the Cape Wind project acts as an example of the obstacles the states still face.
“The Cape Wind project has revealed significant gaps in state and federal authority to permit offshore uses and lease ocean space,” he wrote. “Federal law.does not require consultation with governors of affected states.” Romney noted that the preliminary report presented a more corrective direction for future projects, even though it would not change what occurred during the process with Cape Wind.
