Murkowski lobbying for NOAA change

Kristen Nelson

One of the things he is doing in the nation’s capital, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski said at a March 1 press conference, is ratcheting up the state’s appeal of a January decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration denying Alaska’s amendments to the Alaska Coastal Management Program, which NOAA administers under the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The governor said he has presented the White House with a copy of his Feb. 23 letter to NOAA’s administrator, a letter which is going through the Secretary of Commerce, which “explains to NOAA the problems and asks NOAA for an opportunity to continue the dialogue because we would rather work with them than simply drop the process.” The governor said in the letter that the state would opt out of the program rather than accede to NOAA’s dictates.

The governor also shed some light on why the state’s negotiations with NOAA broke down.

The Alaska Legislature passed changes to the state’s program last year and the state has been working with NOAA to get approval of the changes.

We “thought that we were proceeding along the lines that would be acceptable to them,” the governor said, “and then a new group evidently came into NOAA, reviewed their procedures, and basically changed what we thought we had a tentative agreement for.”

In a Jan. 28 letter NOAA rejected the state’s proposed amendments and insisted “upon increasing the broad regulatory authority of the plan even as we were trying to streamline it,” Murkowski said.

He said the state believes NOAA has violated the spirit of the law which directs NOAA to assist in developing a state’s plan, “not dictate a federal plan to the state.”