Zoning the Ocean
By Audrey Hudson
HumanEvents.com
President Barack Obama has an ambitious plan
for Washington bureaucrats to take command of
the oceans—and with it control over much of the
nation’s energy, fisheries, even recreation in a
move described by lawmakers as the ultimate
power grab to zone the seas.
The massive undertaking also includes control
over key inland waterways and rivers that reach
hundreds of miles upstream, and began with
little fanfare when Obama signed an executive
order in 2010 to protect the aquatic
environment.
“This one to me could be the sleeping power grab
that Americans will wake up to one day and
wonder what the heck hit them,” said Rep. Bill
Flores (R –Texas).
“This is pure administrative fiat,” said Sen.
David Vitter (R –La.). “It’s very troubling.”
“This is purely a unilateral administrative
action with no real congressional input or
oversight,” Vitter said. “I think it clearly
threatens to have a big impact on a lot of
industry, starting with energy, oil and gas, and
fishing.”
But in his zeal to curb sea sprawl, lawmakers
say the president’s executive order also gives
Washington officialdom unprecedented reach to
control land use as well.
“The order says they shall develop a scheme for
oversight of oceans and all the sources
thereof,” Flores said. “So you could have a
snowflake land on Pikes Peak and ultimately it’s
going to wind up in the water, so as a result
they could regulate on every square inch of U.S.
soil.”
Impacts on industry, consumers
The effects of Obama’s far-reaching policy would
be felt by numerous industries including wind
farms and other renewable energy undertakings,
ports, shipping vessels, and other marine
commerce, and upstream it would also affect
mining, timber, even farming.
It will impact consumers directly through rules
addressing recreational uses such as fishing and
boating, and restricting the multiple use
development of the ocean’s resources would also
increase the cost of fuel and food, lawmakers
say.
The idea to create a policy to oversee multiple
uses of the ocean originated during the Bush
administration, but after push back from within
the ranks, including Vitter, the idea was
dropped.
Critics of this revised plan say it is more
narrowly focused, and that the Obama
administration is taking their marching orders
from environmental groups who want to move away
from a multiple-use ocean policy to a no-use
policy.
“If you look at the catalyst for the entire
initiative, it comes from the playbook of
environmental groups that think the ocean ought
to be controlled by the federal government,”
Flores said.
Added Vitter: “This (Obama) administration is
more aggressive and left-leaning, and they are
going whole hog. I think it’s clearly a threat,
and in terms of negatively impacting jobs, it’s
a very, very big threat.”
Blocking new oil, gas production
The ocean policy has already impacted oil and
gas development in the Mid and South Atlantic,
where more environmental analysis is now
required to determine whether new studies must
also be conducted to determine its safety,
according to Interior Department Secretary Ken
Salazar.
Jack Belcher, managing director of the Ocean
Policy Coalition that represents numerous
industries affected by Obama’s initiative
including oil companies, says Salazar’s action
is one example of how the administration is
already blocking new production “on a policy
that hasn’t even been developed yet.”
Still in its draft form, the plan released in
January contains vague goals that call for more
than 150 milestones to be accomplished by next
year that will determine how the ecosystem is
managed.
“Right now, we can only speculate on the
impacts,” Belcher said. “But all of a sudden,
there’s a new authority creating a new plan that
may not allow oil and gas leasing or development
in (some) areas.”
“But what we are worried about, and already
seeing, is it’s being used as a tool to say
we’re not going to do something, or delay it,”
Belcher said. “It creates another layer of
bureaucracy and another opportunity for
litigation. We see this as an opportunity to tie
things up in complete uncertainty.”
Belcher said his members are not opposed to
having a process in place to manage all of the
industries that depend on the ocean, but that
they are already operating under numerous and
sometimes onerous regulations that guide energy
development, the shipping of goods, wind farm
construction, and commercial fishing.
“It isn’t just chaos on the high seas, but this
ocean policy takes the assumption that it is,”
Belcher said. “We’re fearful that (Obama’s
policy) will result in a more draconian system.”
The regulatory uncertainty created by the draft
plan for industries and its employees that
depend on the ocean has prompted numerous
Republican senators to ask for congressional
oversight hearings.
“In these tough economic times, it would be
unfortunate if Congress chose to ignore
responsibility for limiting bureaucratic hurdles
to prosperity,” the lawmakers said in a March 20
letter. The letter was signed by Sens. Vitter,
Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, John
Barrasso of Wyoming, Jim DeMint of South
Carolina, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Roger Wicker
of Mississippi, Mike Crapo of Idaho and John
Cornyn of Texas.
The ocean policy has been a sleeper issue with
very little media coverage, but now that it is
starting to affect industries such as gas and
oil production, lawmakers say congressional
hearings are needed to take a broader look at
its impact and consider public input from all of
the stakeholders, not just environmentalists.
“This has largely been completely under the
radar,” Vitter said. “And that is exactly the
way the administration and their environmental
allies want to do it—announce the administrative
fiat is complete and that we have this new way
of life that nobody knew was coming.”
House Republicans are fighting back by
tightening the purse strings they control and
hope that by cutting off funding to implement
the policy, and putting a stop to officials they
believe are siphoning money away from other
programs, they can block it from going forward.
Rep. Hal Rogers (R -Ky.), who heads the powerful
House Appropriations Committee, has been asked
to put a stop to the administration’s “cloaked
funding” by Rep. Doc Hastings (R–Wash.),
chairman of the House Resources Committee.
“The Obama administration continues to move
forward with zoning the oceans through
implementation of the president’s National Ocean
Policy without requesting funding specifically
for this broad initiative and without answering
basic questions about how funds are currently
being diverted from other missions to fund this
initiative,” Hastings said in an April 2 letter
to Rogers.
Although critics of the plan say it will create
an unprecedented aquatic zoning commission, the
administration has repeatedly denied it.
Administration’s defense
Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council
on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and co-chair of
the newly created National Ocean Council in
charge of the new policy, said the plan “has
been mischaracterized as ‘ocean zoning.’”
“The National Ocean Policy does not create any
new regulations,” added Jane Lubchenco,
undersecretary of Commerce for oceans and
atmosphere. “It is a planning process, it’s not
zoning.”
Calls to CEQ, which oversees the policy, were
not returned.
However, critics point to an Interior Department
memo that says the plan “has emerged as a new
paradigm and planning strategy for coordinating
all marine and coastal activities and facility
constructions within the context of a national
zoning plan.”
Additionally, former Coast Guard Commandant Adm.
Thad Allen, a member of the Ocean Policy Task
Force, told OnEarth Magazine in May,
2010, the plan is “basically taking the notion
of urban planning and putting it into the water
column, as well as the estuary systems that
connect it to everything that impacts ocean
ecosystems.”
Rep. Don Young (R–Alaska) explained the new
bureaucracy to his constituents during an April
3 Alaska field hearing as “a complicated
bureaucratic scheme which includes a 27-member
national ocean council; an 18-member governance
coordinating committee; 10 national policies;
nine regional planning bodies—each involving as
many as 27 federal agencies as well as states
and tribes; nine national priority objectives;
nine strategic action plans; seven national
goals for coastal marine spatial planning; and
12 guiding principles for coastal marine spatial
planning.”
“Are you confused yet?” Young asked the crowd.
“The administration claims that this whole
National Ocean Policy is nothing more than an
attempt to coordinate federal agencies and make
better permitting decisions,” Young said.
“Forgive me if I am a little suspicious when the
federal government—through an executive
order—decides to create a new bureaucracy that
will ‘help’ us plan where activities can or
cannot take place in our waters and inland.”
Competing values
Environmental groups that support the
president’s efforts include the Pew Charitable
Trusts, which says that the fragile health of
the oceans is being threatened by the increasing
industrialization of the seas.
“If poorly planned or managed, drilling for oil
and natural gas in federal waters, developing
aquaculture and building wind, wave and tidal
energy facilities all have the potential to
damage America’s marine environment,” Pew said
in a statement supporting the president’s
policy.
But some believe bureaucratic interference on
such a large scale is the real threat.
“The last thing we need is the federal
government running the damn ocean and a bunch of
bureaucrats running around trying to determine
whether you can fish in one spot or another,”
said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy
at the Institute for Energy Research.
Audrey Hudson, an award-winning investigative journalist, is a Congressional Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS. A native of Kentucky, Mrs. Hudson has worked inside the Beltway for nearly two decades -- on Capitol Hill as a Senate and House spokeswoman, and most recently at The Washington Times covering Congress, Homeland Security, and the Supreme Court. Follow Audrey on Twitter and Facebook.