At least part of the motivation for centering a 
coastal management approach in State government 
was fear on the part of States that direct Federal in- 
volvement might be the alternative. 
A number of coastal States, particularly those on 
the East Coast and the Great Lakes, had enacted 
single-purpose wetland protection laws to stem the | 
loss of these areas to development and to reduce 
coastal erosion. Building on these initiatives by the 
States themselves, coastal zone management was to 
extend similar State controls to all coastal-related 
land use in a comprehensive manner. It was to be 
a general purpose program which would apply to all 
significant activities and all areas within the defini- 
tion of “coastal zone,” rather than single-purpose 
legislation or loosely coupled regulatory programs. 
The coastal zone management approach repre- 
sented a departure in one major regard from pre- 
vious Federal programs. The program was to base its 
contols on a consideration of the coastal resource as 
an entity. That is, the policies which the individual 
States were to adopt were to be based on a reasoned 
look at the entire range of values contained in their 
coastal lands and waters. This comprehensive ap- 
proach contrasts with customary single-use or single- 
resource regulatory programs. 
The proposals for coastal management came at 
a time markedly different from today. The period 
when the concept of coastal zone management was 
conceived was at the height of the “environmental 
movement.” It also coincided with the Santa Bar- 
bara oil spill of January 1969, an event which came 
at a time of increased public sensitivity to the nat- 
ural environment, and through extensive media coy- 
erage, indelibly impressed the public as to the 
vulnerability of the coastal environment. 
The oil spill added a sense of urgency to the issue 
of protecting coastal resources. The Stratton Com- 
mission had termed the siutation a “crisis.” °° The 
26 
National Estuary Study sounded its own alarm: *° 
“Estuaries are in jeopardy. They are being 
damaged, destroyed and reduced in size at 
an accelerating rate by physical alteration 
and pollution. They are favorite places for 
industry, which finds the land cheap, water 
transportation easy, and waste disposal 
convenient. They are also favorite places 
for residential developers who find it ex- 
ceedingly profitable to dredge and fill an 
estuary, and thus destroy part of it in 
order to appeal to affluent Americans to 
live near the water in houses which are 
accessible by both boat and automobile.” 
The idea of a Federal grant-in-aid program to a 
25 Panel Reports, volume 1, op cit. note 1, p. III-145. 
26 U.S. Department of the Interior, op. cit. note 3, p. 2 
i 
State-level office to prepare and administer coastal 
zone management programs won broad support. The 
Nixon Administration initially endorsed the idea and 
introduced legislation. In testimony on December 3, 
1969, Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel testi- 
fied: *7 
“(The National Estuarine Pollution Study] 
concludes that our estuaries are seriously 
polluted and that the unwise use of the 
lands and waters of our estuarine zones 
not only contributes to this pollution, but 
is rapidly destroying valuable natural re- 
sources. While the statutory directive was 
to study the estuarine zones, the findings 
concluded that the management problems 
of our estuaries relate directly to the entire 
coastal zone, and that any management 
system must deal with the coastal zone, 
and its entirety.” 
There was near-unanimous agreement on the con- 
cept of a Federal coastal zone management program, 
although the National League of Cities objected on 
behalf of local governments.** The subsequent de- 
bate centered not on the merits of coastal zone man- 
agement, but on whether the program should be in 
the Department of the Interior or the Department 
of Commerce and whether it should be a component 
of an overall national land-use program, which had 
also been propesed. The Nixon Administration en- 
dorsed the latter approach in opposition to a separate 
coastal program; during the Watergate period sup- 
port for a land-use bill was withdrawn. 
President Nixon approved the National Environ- 
mental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970, and 
declared the coming 10 years to be the “environ- 
mental decade” in which the country would begin 
to make up for past misuse of the environment. 
Major additions to the Clean Air Act were ap- 
proved in 1970. The Federal Water Pollution Con- 
trol Act Amendments were approved in 1972. 
Legislation was enacted in 1972 placing curbs on 
ocean dumping in response to a public furor over 
poison residue disposal off the Atlantic Coast and 
other similar occurrences. 
It was in this atmosphere that the Congress con- 
sidered and enacted the Coastal Zone Management 
Act of 1972 (CZMA). The list of bills signed on the 
same day as the coastal management program indi- 
cates the national mood: Consumer Product Safety 
Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Noise Control 
Act, Ocean Dumping Act, and legislation establish- 
27 U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Public Works, Testi- 
mony, December 3, 1969. 
28 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce. Legislative 
History of the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, -as 
amended in 1974 and 1976, Washington, D.C., Government 
Printing Office, 1976, p, 281. 
iV-8 
