736 



10 



In his November 13 remarks, the President noted that States "have 

 only begun to establish the mechanisms for coastal zone planning, and 

 that activity must proceed rapidly." He went on to state, however, that 

 he did not believe offshore leasing plans should be held up for com- 

 pletion of these programs. 



The prospect of accelerated OCS oil and gas lease activity, along 

 with growing energy facility requirements and the imminent construc- 

 tion of deepwater ports, add to the challenge of bringing rational man- 

 agement to the coastal zone. These probable events have therefore led 

 directly to the Committee's present action to amend the Coastal Zone 

 Management Act. 



Oil and gas operations are not entirely new to California, yet Joseph 

 Bodovitz, executive director of the California Coastal Zone Conserva- 

 tion Commission, testified before the Committee that: 



* * * the thing that makes planning in regard to the OCS oil 

 so difficult is it is impossible to understand what the full rami- 

 fications are on the basis of anything we have received from 

 tlie Interior Department * * *. It is just the uncertainty that 

 makes this so exceedingly difficult to deal with. 



Actual experience with offshore oil and gas development around the 

 world takes such concerns well beyond the realm of abstraction. Along 

 the coast of Louisiana, for example. 20 years of Federal OCS activities 

 (and an additional 15 years of similar operations on State-owned off- 

 shore lands within three miles of shore) have resulted in the loss of an 

 estimated 500 square miles of valuable wetlands." For the most part, 

 those lands have been dredged and filled to accommodate canals, pipe- 

 lines, and other oil-related JFacilities. 



Robert W. Knecht, assistant administrator of NOAA for coastal 

 zone management, testified before the House Merchant Marine and 

 Fisheries Committee about the Louisiana experience : 



The wetlands were destroyed in the name of oil and gas 

 development in a day when we did not understand the value of 

 coastal wetlands in terms of providing valuable nursery 

 grounds, and the scars of that destruction remain there plain- 

 ly visible. 



Robert Bybee, operations manager of the Exploration Department 

 of Exxon Inc.. confirmed this judgment in testimony on April 30, 

 1975. before the Subcommittee on Oceanography of the House Mer- 

 chant Marine and Fisheries Committee. He traced the development of 

 the offshore industry this way : 



I think what you see in the Gulf of Mexico or the south of 

 Louisiana was this imperceptible, almost, moving out of the 

 highlands into the marshes and the estuaries, and then off- 

 shore, and in those days manv of us were not thinking of the 

 environment. And we pretty well did rape the land. 



Mr. Bybee assured the subcommittee, however, that the industry 

 now follows sound environmental practices which prevent similar 

 occurrences. 



Dr. Sherwood Galliano, Centpr for Wetland Resources. Louisiana State University. 



