V-6 



SECTION 2. THE FEDERAL PROGRAMS 



To meet the requirements of the national interest and to carry out 

 its role, the Federal Government has assumed fairly broad responsi- 

 bilities in resource management, planning, regulation and control, 

 and in many programs of technical and financial assistance to the 

 States and the subdivisions. The description of the Federal programs 

 that follows will show how this has developed and how these programs 

 currently meet Federal responsibilities. 



In describing the current Federal programs in the estuarine zone it 

 is important to note that the greater part of these programs is of 

 much broader scope than just that of the estuarine zone, and thus 

 the activities reported herein are generally portions of larger pro- 

 grams which overlap and crossover the estuarine zone, because these 

 programs are of long-standing importance to the development and 

 preservation of the Nation's resources and to the promotion of its 

 commerce and industry they should not be fragmented or segmented by 

 arbitrary geographic dividing lines; nevertheless, this description 

 will confine itself as closely as possible to those parts of the 

 programs relating to the estuarine zone, with the possible risk of 

 appearing incomplete at times. 



FOUR GENERAL CATEGORIES OF PROGRAMS 



Categorization of the multitudinous Federal activities in the estuarine 

 zone cannot be clear-cut as there is a continuous series of interlocking 



