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majority must compete for the services of a limited supply of mediocre-to-poor 
recreation resources. 
It is not unreasonable to state that we are now approaching (in 
many ways) that illogical extreme. Already we have noted the ‘fencing 
out” tendency of local communities and private residents in Connect- 
icut and even Maine, while fees and other restrictive measures to 
limit prime beaches to local residents are commonplace on Cape Cod 
and in many other areas. 
The particular economic and political context within which local 
governmental units make decisions about shoreline use will also lead 
to irresponsible allocation on a broad scale.* The political organization 
of the coastline is the historical one of many small communities, each 
with control over a limited segment of coastal property. The only 
political mechanisms that are available to help correct private market 
deficiencies in shoreline allocation are the local zoning and taxation 
policies of this fragmentation of local community control. We have 
already seen how the uneven distribution of prime recreational shore- 
line property places heavy demand pressures from the region on 
specific communities, making their coastal property more valuable 
(to them and to the people of the region) than some neighboring towns 
not similarly “blessed”? with good beaches or whatever. Yet, in the 
absence of this value being properly represented within the private 
market (where the local community operates), local governmental 
units make decisions based on other considerations. This can best 
be illustrated by looking at the decisionmaking process involving 
some coastal zone project, perhaps a powerplant project. It is im- 
portant here to distinguish between two types of benefits (or dis- 
benefits) of such a project—direct and indirect. Direct effects are 
those that accrue to the consumers or users of the project, the 
user of the power supplied, the bathers on a closed beach, the swallowers 
of polluted air, the viewers of marsh wildlife, etc. All of these effects 
are felt by the local community and by the regional society in general. 
Yet only those benefits (or disbenefits) that accrue to the local 
populace enter into the decision. The community may be willing to 
give up beach or bluff property to have a powerplant, but this may 
not be an optimal allocation of that resource on a regional basis. 
But the “votes” of the region are not counted—only those of the 
local community affect the decision! 
We might ask why a community would be willing to give up this 
valuable property in such a way? The answer is that the local com- 
munity within its particular economic and political context is also 
subject to a second type of benefits—indirect or secondary effects. 
These effects accrue to the suppliers of the resource that make the 
investment possible. Construction workers who build the plant will 
spend a substantial portion of their paychecks in the locale of the 
plants, certainly benefiting local merchants, doctors, and business- 
owners. These people, in turn, spend some of this money in the locale, 
and so on in the traditional multiplier effect. Values that arise in this 
manner are called parochial (secondary) effects and imclude the 
effects on local payrolls, retail earnings, and the broadening of the tax 
base (usually a very powerful factor). For the local community, these 
45 This discussion is based on the treatment found in J. W. Devanney III, et al., ““Economic Factors in 
the Development of a Coastal Zone,’’ MIT Sea Grant Project Office Report No. MITSG 71-1, Nov. 20, 1970. 
