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ACMP once again an issue for Alaska Legislature Coastal communities ask for extension on plan revisions; state says plans will be revised on time; funds provided to communities for work were contingent on date set by Alaska Legislature in 2003; federal agency hasn’t yet approved program changes Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
The 2003 Alaska Legislature spent a lot of time on the Alaska Coastal Management Program and the 2005 Legislature is now revisiting the issue.
In 2003 the Legislature, after acrimonious debate between the administration and coastal communities, finally voted in revisions which simplified the program and set a two-year window for coastal districts to review and revise their district plans. The state also needs to reach agreement on plan revisions with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency which oversees the program and provides funding, and has run into some problems on that front.
In February, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski told NOAA that if its Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management “does not immediately abandon the new requirements and broken promises” in its Jan. 28 decision, the Alaska Coastal Management Program will expire in the summer of 2005.
One of the things OCRM is requiring, the governor said, is expansion of the role of coastal districts. “Few other states have coastal districts or their equivalent and there is no requirement that Alaska include coastal districts as part of our coastal management program,” the governor said. The state has, he said, included coastal districts as part of its coastal management program “to supplement existing state and federal authorities where the matter is of local concern.”
But, he said, balancing the authority between the state and coastal districts “is a matter within the discretion granted a state in the CZMA (Coastal Zone Management Act), and therefore any specific balance of authority directed by OCRM is inappropriately addressed as a program issue.
“Again,” the governor said, “this is a simple matter of state’s rights.” Bills introduced to extend revision window The Senate Committee on Community and Regional Affairs finished work on a bill extending the window for coastal district revisions and sent the bill on to Senate Resources March 16.
The Alaska Department of Natural Resources told the committee that if the Legislature extends the date it set in House Bill 191 in 2003 for coastal communities to revise their district management plans, the department will be asking for an additional $200,000 each for fiscal years 2007 and 2008.
Funding is available for existing staff through fiscal year 2006, the department said in a fiscal note, but the bill under consideration, a committee substitute for Senate Bill 102, would extend plan due dates until one year after the state’s revised program is approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and would require the department to retain two to three positions for an additional two years.
Senate Community and Regional Affairs staff told the committee March 16 that the committee substitute mirrors House Bill 189 submitted by House State Affairs Committee. The biggest difference from the original bill “is it will base the deadline for district coastal program revisions and annulment of the existing program upon federal approval of the state program” by NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, rather than simply extending the due date from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006. Districts asking for more time The sponsor statement for the original bill, SB 102, by Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, calls the bill “a straightforward solution to a problem facing many of Alaska’s coastal district management programs.” The bill “comes in response to requests by municipal planners for more time to complete this time consuming and difficult process.”
Stevens also said that as the state and federal governments “work to resolve differences with the state’s guidance to local districts regarding the scope and content of their program, it makes no sense for coastal districts to rush to meet the current July 1, 2005, deadline, only to have to revise the plan again in the future.”
In a lengthy hearing March 14, representatives of a number of coastal districts told the committee that they needed more time. Stevens, who chairs Senate Community and Regional Affairs, asked those testifying how they would use the additional time and was told that coastal districts needed the time to explain revisions in the program to local communities.
Coastal districts also said they want to wait and see what finally falls out in the state-federal battle over the program before completing work on their revisions. Some also said that, if they are forced to complete work on their programs this year, they will simply make the programs as restrictive as possible and let the state sort it out. Administration: districts on schedule Randy Bates, deputy director of the department’s Office of Project Management and Planning, told the committee March 16 that there are 35 established coastal districts in the state, 33 of which currently have approved coastal plans. HB 191 required all coastal districts to “evaluate their plans, review them and resubmit them in compliance with HB 191 and the implementing regulations. Of those 33 coastal districts that have coastal plans, 27 of them have committed to making those plan revisions,” he said.
Sixteen of those districts will have their draft plans out for public review by mid-April, and the remaining 11 by the end of April.
“To the best of our knowledge all 27 coastal districts that are making plan revisions will meet the deadline,” Bates said.
The department made about $900,000 available to the districts for the effort, “which in part funded their planning revision efforts, and part of that grant is that they have to have the plans done by July first of ’05. So as far as we know, those that we are in contract with will have their plan revisions done in time.” One-time federal grant runs out Bates said the fiscal note for $200,000 for each fiscal year 2007 and 2008 reflects the fact that federal and state funding is available for all current staff through June 30, 2006, “… the date on which all agency program revisions were supposed to be completed.” That includes regulatory changes, district plan submissions and approval of those plans by the Department of Natural Resources, he said.
The committee substitute for the bill “delays the submission and the review and approval of those coastal plan revisions” to a date that looks to be around June 30, 2008, he said. “Recognizing it’s a two-year delay, we do not have the funds to carry our staff forward for those additional two years. We lose federal funding as of ’06; therefore it results in a fiscal note…”
Bates said the fiscal note reflects “that one of the pots of money that we have within the ACMP is what’s called the coastal impact assistance program money. That is a one-time allocation that came out of Congress for states that had oil and gas exploration off their coasts, OCS exploration.” Monies from that program, he said, expire July 1, 2005, and the department has requested an extension of the grant so that it can use the funds and keep the staff through July 1, 2006.
Some of the key people looking at the plan revisions “are funded out of that pot,” he said, and the department expects that pot of money to expire in July of ’06, “therefore we don’t have the money to maintain those staff…” Districts can continue to refine plans Bates said the department thinks the districts can get their revisions done to meet the July 1, 2005, deadline. But that, he said, “does not end the planning process.”
The districts can continue to refine their coastal plans, and the department is staffed to continue to assist districts with basic planning requirements.
Bates said negotiations have been ongoing with the program’s granting and approving agency, NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, for two years.
“And we tried to get them to the table early so that we wouldn’t run into approvability problems or roadblocks like we have now. The unfortunate problem was that they didn’t come to the table the way we expected or asked them to, so we are in the situation we’re in.” Major philosophical difference There is “a very major philosophical difference,” Bates said, between that the Alaska Legislature passed in 2003 and what OCRM wants the state to do. The state wants “a streamlined, non-redundant program that works for Alaska and we have found that OCRM is pushing us into a program that duplicates existing state and federal law.”
One of the reasons the administration opposes SB 102, he said, is that if the timeframe is extended until the Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management gives final approval of the state’s proposal, “we are playing into the feds’ hands in forcing change upon the state. If we don’t keep OCRM working hard, they’re going to find that they can continue to push the state to a program that we simply don’t agree with, that is not going to work for Alaska.”
The administration, he said, wants to keep moving forward, “and by giving OCRM more time, the way that this (bill) does, I think that we’re playing right into their hands for Washington, D.C., to manage our resources.
“And so that’s one of the very primary reasons this administration opposes this bill.”
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