5.4 — OREGON 



Two OCS leasing areas lie adjacent to the coast of Oregon, the 

 Washington-Oregon area off the north coast and the northern California 

 area off the south coast (Figure 9). The Bureau of Land Management 

 plans to lease both of these areas at the same time in 1978 and in 1980. 

 However, outer continental shelf petroleum development is not yet an 

 important issue in Oregon. Leasing is still 2 years away and Oregon's 

 government and citizens are more concerned about other more immediate 

 problems . 



5.4.1 Description of the Region 1 



The Oregon Coast has 500 miles of shoreline comprising 352 miles 

 along the Pacific Ocean proper and 148 miles of bay/estuary coastline. 

 Three hundred miles of shoreline are beach (60 percent), with the remainder 

 consisting of rocky headlands, marsh areas, bulkheads and revetments. 

 Most of the Oregon coast is bordered by mountains with the Oregon Coast 

 Range occurring in the northern portion and the Klamath Mountains and 

 Siskiyou Mountains along the southern coast. 



Oregon has 14 separate estuary systems but they only total about 

 56,000 acres. The largest estuaries are the Columbia River (15,000 

 acres), Coos Bay (9,543 acres), Tillamook Bay (8,839 acres) and Umpqua- 

 Winchester Bay (5,712 acres). Oregon's estuaries are valuable for their 

 production of clams, oysters and crabs. The state annually harvests 

 about 160,000 razor clams, 1.8 million bay clams, and 225,000 dungeness 

 crabs . 



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