Law and the Environment : Environmental Lawyer & Attorney : Foley Hoag Law Firm : Boston, Washington D.C.

Earlier this week, Energy & Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles announced the release of the nation’s first ocean management plan. The plan is similar, but not identical to, the draft plan issued last July. Here are the highlights

A Prohibited Area off the coast of the Cape Cod National Seashore, where most uses will be – you guessed it – prohibited

Multi-Use Areas, constituting approximately two-thirds of the planning area, where uses will be permitted if they comply with stringent standards for protecting marine resources

Renewable Energy Areas, where commercial- and community-scale wind projects have been found to be appropriate.

One significant element of the final plan, and one highlighted in Secretary Bowles’s press release, is that, where projects are proposed in areas including sensitive marine resources, it will be presumed that an alternative project outside the resource area would be less environmentally damaging. Project proponents would have to meet a balancing test, demonstrating that the project has public benefits which outweigh the detriment to the resource.

It’s going to take some time to digest the entire plan. However, most of the nation outside Houston has accepted the concept of zoning on land for almost 100 years – and land-based zoning affects private property. It’s difficult to argue with the concept that the Commonwealth should plan for resources – state waters – that it does own. In addition, having a defined framework for reviewing proposals to utilize state waters should help remove some of the uncertainty associated with the current ad hoc review that necessarily occurs in the absence of a plan. 

Deerin Babb-Brott – time to take a well-earned vacation!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

This week, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs announced release of the draft Ocean Management Plan, developed pursuant to the Oceans Act of 2008. The draft Plan has gotten most press for its identification of specific areas for off-shore wind energy development – as well as its prohibition of wind farms in other areas, including the area of the proposed Buzzards Bay wind farm. EOEEA Secretary Ian Bowles was quoted as saying that Buzzards Bay is too crowded and sensitive for the development of large-scale wind farms.

The Plan is about much more than wind farms, however. It really is zoning brought off-shore. There are areas where certain uses are prohibited, areas in which uses are encouraged, and other areas that will be subject to performance standards to determine whether specific uses should be allowed. Where uses are at least conceptually allowed, there will be provisions to protect sensitive areas, including a provision that requires proponents of uses in such areas to “avoid, or demonstrate that there is no less damaging practicable alternative, or demonstrate that data does not accurately characterize the resource or use.”

The Plan is important for several reasons:

The breadth of its application

The effort to integrate ocean planning with the Commonwealth’s climate change agenda

Its potential precedential effect on other states and nascent federal ocean zoning efforts

Public hearings on the Plan will be held in September, though they have not yet been scheduled. Even in advance of the hearings, comments on the Plan can be submitted here. The schedule calls for the final Plan to be issued by December 31, 2009.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link