Rhode Island Coastal Management Program (RICMP). Evaluation findings for the Rhode Island Coastal Zone Management Program covering the period from January 1982 through April 1983, The Coastal Energy Impact Program from April 1978 through April 1983, and the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Sanctuary covering the period from September 1980 through April 1983. Department of Environmental Management, Providence, Rhode Island. 1983. 66 p. Rosener, J. B. The Federal Coastal Energy Impact Program (CEIP): aid or SOP to State and local governments? Oral presentation to the annual meeting of the American Society of Public Administration, San Francisco, California, April 14, 1980. Stobaugh, R. and D. Yergin. Energy Future, Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School. New York: Random House, Inc.; 1980. 493 p. United States General Accounting Office. Issues in leasing offshore lands for oil and gas development (Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General). EMD-81-59. United States General Accounting Office, Washington, D.C. 1981. ROLE OF THE STATES IN THE NATIONAL COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM A very difficult problem confronted those designing the national coastal zone management (CZM) program in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The coastal area has tremendously value and the need for improved management of development in coastal areas to protect this national treasure was clear. Then, as now, however, the wide range of issues to be addressed and the diversity of the coast presented a daunting challenge to the design of a national CZM program. The range of development issues to be addressed in coastal resource management is quite broad (CSO 1979; Knecht 1979; Myers 1981). Coastal management includes protecting wetlands, coastal water quality, dunes and beaches, and other important natural areas, preventing loss of life and property due to storms and erosion, providing public access to beaches and waters, assuring adequate space for ports, and resolving increasingly intense conflicts between competing uses for limited and environmentally sensitive coastal resources. Moreover, the nation's coasts have tremendous physical, economic, political and cultural diversity. The physical setting along the United States' 95,000 mile coast varies tremendously. It includes natural systems as different as the rocky headlands of Maine, the barrier islands of the Carolina's, the wetlands of Louisiana, the harbors of Lake Michigan, the rugged Alaska shores, and the coral reefs of American Samoa. The type and extent of development pressures also varies tremendously. Some portions of the American coast are heavily urbanized, with intense pressure for additional residential, commercial, and industrial development. Others are resort communities. Still others are largely rural areas, with agricultural, forestry, and fisheries development predominating. Some coastal areas are having a difficult time coping with tremendous development pressures while others are suffering through economic decline and high unemployment. The nation's coastal area also has tremendous political diversity. The coastal area has 35 states and territories with over 400 coastal counties and thousands of municipalities and special purpose authorities. Each has different laws, varying state-local legal relationships, and disparate approaches to the management of coastal development. This diversity of the nation's coastal area makes the design of a uniform national approach to coastal management issues impossible. The answer to this dilemma that was incorporated into the federal Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) was to use state coastal management programs to address national concerns about proper management of coastal resources. State programs could incorporate the diversity of the coasts while meeting minimum national standards. Twenty-nine states and territories have developed individual coastal zone management programs that have been approved by the federal government as meeting the minimum national standards established by the CZMA. This chapter address the question of what the states have actually done with their coastal management programs. We examined the types of projects completed and the pattern of expenditures of federal grant funds. The focus was on results-what has actually been done in the states to implement the national mandate of improving coastal zone management. Study Methods Work on this project began in June 1989 with the development of a detailed study plan, which was approved by the project's Technical Advisory Committee on July 11, 1989. This plan envisioned gathering information on state CZM program activities from literature reviews, data from the federal Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce, and direct solicitations of information from the 29 states participating in implementation of the CZMA as of the end of 1989. An initial request for studies, reports and relevant information was made to delegates of the Coastal States Organization (CSO) on July 10, 1989 at that organization's annual meeting in Charleston, S.C. A letter requesting information and a contact person for review of preliminary project reports on state activities was sent to all state coastal zone program managers on August 30, 1989. Previously published reports of state program activities were also reviewed. These included both general program overviews (Burgess 1989; Knecht 1979; Matuszeski 1985; OCRM 1988; OCZM 1984; OCZM 1982) and reports on particular subject areas, such as hazard area management (OCRM 1990a) and nonpoint source water pollution (OCRM 1990b). Also, overviews prepared by the states collectively (CSO 1985; CSO 1981; CSO 1979) and by Congressional review agencies (U.S. GAO 1986; U.S. GAO 1980) were reviewed, as were detailed discussions of individual state programs (DeGrove 1984; Fischer 1985; Guy 1983; Kinsey 1985; McCrea and Feldman 1977; Owens 1985). The next step in the study was to have a study team member review state program files at OCRM to prepare individual state and territory summaries of program activities. In addition to textual summaries of program accomplishments, a review was made of the grant files to allocate program expenditures by seven major subject areas. The seven subject area categories chosen were based on the national interest areas specified in the CZMA. The categories used for analysis were: 1) Improving governmental decision-making (e.g., permit simplification efforts, land use plan preparation, and intergovernmental conflict resolution); 2) natural resource protection (e.g., permitting for wetland protection, water quality studies, habitat protection projects); 3) improving public access to coastal resources (e.g., beach access studies, acquisition and construction of parking and access facilites); 4) urban waterfront development; 5) hazards mitigation (e.g., erosion and flooding studies, development of setback programs and hazard education efforts); 6) natural resource development (e.g., improvement of fisheries facilities, acquaculture development); and 7) ports and marinas. The task of assigning CZMA expenditures to these subject areas was complicated by the fact that there are no uniform grant application, performance report or program evaluation standards that compile expenditure information in a consistent fashion. Also, some projects address several subject areas and others do not clearly fit into any of the seven categories. Therefore, the expenditure analysis should be regarded as a general indication of the areas of spending and the relative degree of effort devoted by the states to these subjects-not a precise fiscal analysis. The study limited its detailed analysis of financial expenditures to the six fiscal years of 1982 through 1987. This was done for several reasons, including the availability of grant files at OCRM, selecting a period when a complete range of states and territories were actively participating in the program, and having final performance reports of the year's activities available for review. Grant applications, state performance reports, 312 evaluations, state program reports, and interviews with OCRM staff were used to develop these state summaries. This work was carried out from September to December 1989. Individual draft summaries of state programs and the allocation of their grant funds were sent to the designated state contact persons for review and comment on January 10, 1990. Revisions were made and a revised draft was sent to the states and territories for final review on March 9, 1990. Discussions were held with a number of states to clarify the reports and resolve questions at the national coastal zone program managers meeting in Washington, D.C. on March 28, 1990. Final comments from all 29 states with approved coastal management programs were received by early May, 1990. Overview of the Findings The principal means of federal financial support for the implementation of coastal zone management programs has been grants to states under Section 306 of the CZMA. Chart 1 depicts the level of funding of this program over its entire history, with the period of detailed analysis for this study indicated. Under the CZMA, states and territories are granted considerable latitude on how best to allocate available funds to address priority national interest areas. Grants are made on an annual basis, with each state's share of available federal funds being determined by a formula that considers shoreline mileage and population. An examination of how these funds have been allocated and what tasks that states have undertaken provides insight into coastal management priorities of the 1980's. Chart 2 indicates the relative funding attention the seven major national interest subjects received in the first full decade of program implementation. To see the relative allocation of resources in constant 1982 dollars see Table 1. CZM programs occupy the unique niche of looking at the coastal region in its entirety, including its environmental, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. The state and territorial programs identify problems, facilitate solutions, and attempt to coordinate the multitude of single purpose governmental programs that affect development and use of coastal resources. Therefore it is not surprising that the focus of state coastal management programs has been in improving government decision-making. This category of work includes expediting and simplifying permit reviews, developing and implementing new plans, improving the data available for management decisions, and increasing public participation in coastal zone management. Thirty nine percent of the federal funds available to the states and territories for program implementation in the 1982-87 study period were devoted to this purpose. The second largest area of concentration has been the protection of natural resources, with 28 percent of the funds being devoted to this purpose. These two program activities, which together account for two-thirds of coastal zone management spending, indeed reflect the core of what the CZMA was designed to accomplish-implementation of more effective decisions to better protect the natural resources of the coast. State programs have also addressed other critical concerns in their particular state or territory. Improving public access to coastal resources, with 11 percent of the funds, was the third largest area of state coastal zone program activity. Natural resource development, hazards mitigation and urban waterfront development each received 6-7 percent of the funds, with port projects getting 2 percent. This allocation of management attention is consistent with the original design of the program; that of allowing individual states to devote priority attention to those critical national interest areas that most affect their coast, but doing so in the context of the national program. The expenditure data for individual programs supports the wisdom and necessity of this flexible approach. The diversity of state programs and their expenditure pattern indeed reflects the diversity of their coasts. All of the programs devoted at least some of their financial resources to the two core subjects of improving government decision-making and natural resource protection. But even for these the range of need and importance varied significantly. For example, five programs spent less than 20 percent of their resources on improving governmental decision making, but three programs spent more than 70 percent on this. Similarly, for natural resource |