434 



that its local political subdivisions will implement and comply with 

 the plan after its adoption. 



(3) To require its agencies and local subdivisions, when developing 

 legislative or other significant action proposals affecting the bay 

 resources, to (a) study and consider all impacts, including the long- 

 range effects, of the proposed action on the estuarine resources of the 

 bay; and (h) explicitly state considerations of national. State, or 

 local policy which justify any adverse effects that cannot be avoided 

 by following reasonable alternatives. 



(4) To establish and maintain a joint agency in cooperation with 

 the Federal Government that shall : (a) coordinate State and Federal 

 research and studies in the bay and conduct its own work along these 

 lines ; (h) conduct an education program concerning issues in the use 

 and management of the bay's resources; (c) evaluate proposed plans 

 and projects, both public and private, for the use and management 

 of the bay and its estuarine resources by identifying the proposal's 

 advantages and disadvantages, weighing tradeoffs between disparate 

 benefits involved in the proposal, pointing out effects on the various 

 interdependent uses of the bay's estuarine resources, and suggesting 

 alternatives that should be considered: and (d) periodically evaluate 

 existing management programs and the condition of the bay's estu- 

 arine resources, economic, and other trends affecting those resources, 

 and report its conclusions and recommendations to the two States and 

 the Federal Government. 



Three major objectives underline the proposed use of the compact 

 instrument along the preceding lines. 



The first is to create a governmental institution whose predominant 

 concern and mission would be to define and clarify issues and the con- 

 sequences of alternative policies for the use and management of the 

 estuarine resources of Chesapeake Bay. Decisions on those issues and 

 execution of those decisions would remain with the politically re- 

 sponsible legislative and administrative institutions of the two States 

 and the Federal Government. 



The aim would be to dramatize more effectively, to the political 

 process which must choose among alternative ways of utilizing and 

 managing the resources of the bay, the two central needs that are the 

 core of sound resource management. These are, first, to eliminate or 

 reduce the adverse spillovers from certain uses that decrease or destroy 

 the possibility of other use of the same resources. The need, in other 

 words, is maximum preservation or conservation of the resource in 

 order to maintain multiple use, and therefore maximum use, both now 

 and in the future. The other need is to resolve the competition among 

 different uses which results from the ever-increasing intensity of 

 utilization, and from the inherent ultimate scarcity of some estuarine 

 resources, through the conferring of priority on that mix of uses which 

 society deems most beneficial, based on both short- and long-range 

 considerations. 



To facilitate the compact agency's performance of this unique func- 

 tion, which today is largely not performed, each signatory's member- 

 ship in the agency should represent broad citizen interest and values 

 in estuarine resources rather than those of the individual Federal or 

 State agencies administering resource development or protection 



