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PAGE UPDATED: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2008 5:05 AM PST
Boundaries are an increasingly prominent feature of ocean policy
By Geneva Miller
For Bandon Western World
The topic of marine reserves has been a contentious issue in Bandon and all along the Oregon Coast lately.
But while residents may be aware of what is happening now, they may not have the historical perspective
that led to the current political climate. How did we get here?
Progressive initiatives such as the 1967 Beach Bill and the union’s first federally recognized Territorial Sea
Plan once earned Oregon a leading role in ocean planning.
But as potential ocean uses multiply, departmental agencies and legislators struggle to moderate the
debate over marine reserves and their role in Oregon’s ocean.
Bob Bailey, Coastal Program Manager for the Department of Land Conservation and Development, notes
that regulating the open sea is a relatively new undertaking. He says agencies have been cautious about
zoning a territory so characteristically different than land.
“But what we are seeing in Oregon is something that is playing out in many nearshore ocean areas around
the world: the demand for ocean space for new uses and allocation of that space through boundaries in
what was previously the open range of the ocean,” said Bailey.
Regulation began in 1953
Oregonians enjoyed decades of access to a zone-free ocean until 1953, when U.S. Congress assigned
states regulatory responsibility for the three-mile-wide strip of territorial sea along their coastal boarders.
As offshore development mounted through the 1970s and 80s, the federal government established the 200mile Exclusive Economic Zone surrounding the United States to control ocean-based permits and leasing for
mineral, gas and oil extraction.
Oregon’s 1994 Territorial Sea Plan was the first to earn federal recognition. Bandon’s Bill Russell explains
the significance.
“We used to be a leader in these things,” Russell said. “If a state has a Territorial Sea Plan that is
recognized federally, then all agencies who plan activities in the exclusive economic zone have to comply
with state regulations.”
Oregon’s response to the changing seascape was both timely and proactive. The 1991 Ocean Resources
Management Plan advanced goals outlined by the LCD Commission in the 1970s. The Ocean Policy Advisory
Council convened in 1991 to develop specific guidelines in the Territorial Sea Plan.
Locally, Russell founded Shoreline Education for Awareness. He was a charter member of OPAC, serving on
the council from 1992 to 2002. He concurs with Bailey, that present developments were not detailed in the
initial Territorial Sea Plan.
“There was a lot of time we spent managing the undersea cables,” Russell recalls. “A lot of these
(emerging) applications were not foreseen.”
Reserves idea emerges
The council’s research in the 1990s covered a variety of coastal planning, including marine reserves. Russell
has saved binders filled with evidence of OPAC’s outreach, including templates for graphic interpretive signs
and council newsletters.
Bailey reports that former Gov. John Kitzhaber assigned the council to prepare recommendations on marine
reserves in 2000. As DLCD representative, Bailey organized 11 public meetings on the subject in 2002. Six
of those meetings were held in coastal towns. And that’s when the communication broke down.
The OPAC recommendation, published in August 2002, noted that none of Oregon’s marine areas are fully
protected from extraction or development. The report cites scientific research pointing to such fully
protected reserves as a sustainability tool consistent with Oregon’s Ocean Resources Plan.
The report summarized public response as “ranging from outright rejection of the idea that marine reserves
should be considered to assertions of the need to enact large reserves immediately.”
At a Port of Bandon meeting last month, Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, shared his recollections,
saying Bailey minimized coastal constituent concerns and publicized supportive responses from Portlandbased Audubon Society members.
“Kitzhaber asked, ‘Should we consider a limited system of marine reserves?’ And that was an appropriate
question to ask,” said Krieger. “To orchestrate the answer is not appropriate.”
OPAC represents coast
John Griffith, OPAC member and 2002 vice chairman of Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association, says
the council also ignored a statement drafted by OCZMA intended to guide the rationale and implementation
of reserves. Griffith expressed his frustration to the DLDC in what media reports called a coarsely worded
e-mail, and Kitzhaber relieved Griffith of his council seat.
“My firing focused legislative attention on OPAC for the first time. It was apparent that the legislature was
exceedingly unfamiliar with it,” said Griffith. “Rep. Wayne Krieger asked me to assist him with a bill for the
2003 Legislative Assembly to improve OPAC by making it more representative of the coastal community,
being that the coastal community has to bear the cost of any ocean policy decisions that result in harm to
the ocean or dependent coastal communities and citizens.”
Krieger led the committee, which drafted amendments to House Bill 3534. Agency members were
reassigned ex-official, non-voting roles. Amendments stipulated that the council perform coastal economic
impact analysis before recommending marine reserve implementation to the Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife.
Bailey explained the council’s two year hiatus: “Because the bill was in play during the first half of 2003,
OPAC did not meet. And after the bill passed, there was a long stalemate between Governor Kulongoski and
South Coast county commissioners over the appointment of John Griffith to the OPAC, and so the OPAC did
not meet until late 2005.”
Russell characterized the legislative amendments as punitive, and said, “Personal conflicts resulted in a
suspension of OPAC process and a partisan restructuring of this important government function,” noting,
“those conflicts still exist.”
Gov. Ted Kulongoski reappointed Griffith to the council in 2008. The governor’s executive order, signed in
March of this year, directed the ODFW to solicit marine reserve site nominations and DLCD to work with
OPAC to recommend Territorial Sea Plan provisions on wave energy projects. Krieger contends that
executive order does not trump statute; he says economic impact analyses must precede marine reserve
site designation.
According to Bailey, Kulongoski’s agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to accept
wave energy permits means the council and DLCD must plan for varied ocean uses now — those uses
include proposed reserve sites.
“So, I expect that not only will the Territorial Sea Plan be revised with wave energy sites per the Governor's
Executive Order, but that it will be amended in time to include the marine reserves that result from the
process the state is currently engaged in,” said Bailey. “I do not know the number of sites or the timing or
exactly how the designation might happen (considering that the list of marine reserve sites is going to go to
the 2009 legislature), but I think that is a logical outcome of the marine reserves site designation process.”