4d 



(h) Developing interstate agreements for the conduct of 

 joint or coordinated planning or other management functions 

 m interstate estuaries. 



(^) Establishing appropriaite intrastate regional mana^- 

 agement organizations or special districts to provide effective 

 local implementation of the use and management plans for 

 intrastate estuarine and coastal zones. 



(j) Authorizing local governments to exercise tax policies 

 designed to facilitate the preservation of estuarine and 

 coastal sites which should be preserved and used in their 

 natural state. 



Responsibilities and Recommended Role of Local Government in 

 THE Comprehensive Estuarine and Coastal Management 

 Program 



The local governments of this coimtry are subdivisions of the States 

 and are created by the States for a wide variety of purposes. These 

 purposes may range from specific functions such as water supply, 

 sewage collection and treatment, port development and operation, etc., 

 to general-purpose units of government such as counties, cities, and 

 towns. 



responsibilities of local government 



It is with the general purpose units of government that the responsi- 

 bility rests for many of the day-to-day decisions that have impact on 

 the quality of the estuarine and coastal environment. The responsi- 

 bility to control the character and location of shoreline developments 

 through land use planning and zoning and the enforcement of zoning 

 requirements resides with the local governments. The responsibility 

 to control waste discharges and land drainage exists largely with 

 local governments. The interface between people and government 

 takes place largely at the local level. Because of these responsibilities 

 and relationships it is important that we be aware of the extent to 

 which the local governments have been effective in influencing the bal- 

 ance between the destruction or misuse of the ^tuarine and coastal 

 resources, and the development of plans for their effective comprehen- 

 sive management. For the most part local governments have not made 

 a significant contribution toward bringing about balanced use of the 

 estuaries and their related land resources. 



While the States have retained control of the uses of estuarine 

 waters, local governments have been delegated the prime responsi- 

 bility for managing the adjacent land areas, which in many cases 

 has included much of the marsh and wetland resources. The local 

 governments, inadequately staffed and frequently too small to encom- 

 pass an entire estuarine or coastal area, laxiking funds and receiving 

 little guidance, coordination, and supervision from the States, often 

 have been subjected to severe economic and policital pressures to pro- 

 ceed with unplanned or limited purpose development without an ade- 

 quate appraisal of the long-range adverse impacts on the estuarine 

 and coastal environment. As a result all too many valuable estuarine 

 and coastal resources continue to be destroyed or greatly diminished 

 in their usefulness. 



