RESOURCES

by Marya Morris

"As powerful as Hurricane Hugo was, it will be surpassed by bigger storms in the future; population growth and increased development along the coasts suggest that these future storms may cause even more damage and loss of life." -From Coasts in Crisis, U.S. Geological Survey, 1990.

n October 1992, two months after Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida, this remark from 1990 has proven prophetic. Hurricanes, storm surges, flooding, and erosion are recurring realities in coastal

communities. Major natural disasters, such as Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hurricane Andrew this past August, force us to refocus our attention on the human, environmental, and financial ramifications of intense land development in and near coastal wetlands, estuaries, and on coastlines. The rights of property owners are expanding, carrying with that expansion the assumption that environmental protection comes at the expense of job creation and economic

(Morris is a Senior Research Associate at the American Planning Association (APA) in Chicago. She is the author of Wetlands Protection: A Local Government Handbook, published by EPA and APA in September 1991.)

development. Preserving the natural functions and values of coastal areas is paramount to enhancing the economic value of the coasts, ensuring the stability of the coastal communities, and sparing all taxpayers the cost of misguided land-development practices. The most rapid land development and population growth in the United States is occurring near the coasts. According to the 1990 census, 50 percent of Americans currently live within 50 miles of a coast; this number likely will increase to 75 percent by 2010. Moreover, the National Coastal Research Institute (NCRI) estimated in 1991 that coastal recreation and tourism generates $8 to 12 billion annually. In 1985, NCRI estimated that 31.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product (GNP), almost $3 trillion, originated in the 413 coastal counties (including Great Lakes coastal counties).

Much of the land development spurred by the population boom has caused extensive damage on beaches and dunes, and in estuaries and coastal wetlands. This problem, combined with existing threats of sea-level rise, periodic storm damage, shoreline erosion, and declining water quality, poses continuing challenges to coastal resource management.

In many cases, land development in sensitive coastal areas has hampered the ability of beaches, estuaries, and wetlands to perform their natural functions of erosion protection,

filled, millions of dollars must be spent to build and improve storm-water retention systems. When estuaries are disturbed, wildlife habitats are lost permanently and pollutants proceed directly into bays and the ocean, where they threaten human safety and the fishing and shellfish industries. When beach-front property is developed, fragile sand dunes and coastal vegetation are destroyed, thus endangering marine life with pollution and sediments from eroded beaches and increasing the likelihood and magnitude of damage to private property from hurricanes and tropical storms. When coasts are developed, expensive devices like seawalls, groins, riprap, and imported sand must be used to protect private property from the inevitable encroachment of erosion and waves.

In other words, current land development patterns in coastal areas are threatening the sustainability of the entire coastal environment. Significant changes in the nature and extent of land development are required if we want future generations to be able to use and enjoy these resources.

While it would be difficult to argue that these areas are underregulated, the question is, Are the regulations.

working? In the current economic climate, any action that somehow limits land development or business activity will be perceived as "bad" or even antiAmerican. This makes it incumbent on environmentalists and those who value these areas to make it crystal clear to property owners in coastal areas that ignoring regulations, or fighting their passage, will, in the end, entirely destroy the resource that gave their property value in the first place. Some of the current laws and ordinances described below-that regulate development in coastal areas offer glimmers of hope that these areas can be saved.

Development in coastal and inland wetlands is regulated by the Clean Water Act's Section 404 permitting procedure. The law establishes a permit program that regulates the discharge of dredged and fill material into wetlands. Most individuals who follow environmental news are aware of the current, long-running debate over the definition of wetlands. The controversy stems from the 1989 federal wetlands delineation manual, which defined wetlands in such a way that even some lands that rarely are wet are wetlands. Because coastal wetlands are usually fully immersed in water or

subject to tides, there is not as much debate about their status as wetlands. The wetlands permitting process, however, allows far too many acres of coastal wetlands to be drained and filled for development.

There are other government programs that have greater, albeit limited, success than the Section 404 process in balancing environmental protection and economic vitality in these fragile areas. The goal of many of them is to encourage land development patterns that reduce negative externalities, such as increased stormwater runoff; contamination of ground water, rivers, and bays from nonpointsource pollution; and erosion of coastlines.

The federal Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) of 1972 provides funding to the 32 coastal states (including Great Lakes states) to develop and implement programs for the proper conservation and environmentally sound development of coastal areas. States spend the bulk of CZMA funds on "improving government decision making." The specific activities undertaken by states in this regard have been coordination of permit review and procedures, elimination of duplicative federal

reviews in wetlands projects, and preparation of handbooks to assist property owners. The 1990 CZMA amendments authorized new enhancement grants that are to be based on each state's assessment of its priority needs and the development of multiyear strategies to attain state goals.

A 1990 analysis of the CZMA program by NCRI indicated that each dollar of CZMA funds spent by states was associated with an increase of $25 to $37 in coastal GNP due to coastdependent activities (e.g., fisheries, off-beach recreation, and shipping), an increase of $1.50 in coastal GNP due to coast-linked activities (e.g., fish processing and marine equipment sales), and an increase of $482 to $650 in coastal GNP due to coastal-service activities (e.g., real estate, retail, and hotels).

Section 320 of the Clean Water Act, established by the 1987 Water Quality Act Amendments, created the National Estuaries Program. The purposes of the program are to identify nationally significant estuaries, protect and improve their water quality, and enhance their living resources. When Congress reconvenes in January 1993, the National Estuary Program is up for reauthorization under H.R. 5070, the Water Pollution Control and Estuary Restoration Financing Act, and its companion bill in the Senate, S. 2831. The program requires that a Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan be developed by a local or state planning or management agency for each estuary that is participating in the program.

The program can be very effective in implementing a regional solution to protecting estuaries from pollution and preserving wildlife habitat as the following example from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, illustrates. However, the effort is limited to only 18 estuaries in the whole country, which means the majority of estuarine areas are still at extreme risk.

A plan for Buzzards Bay estuary off Cape Cod was completed in 1990. A long history of industrial discharge at Buzzards Bay had resulted in highly contaminated sediment. The sediment was so bad that one part of the bay had been designated as a Superfund site

and had been closed to fishing and the public since 1979. The plan, now being implemented by the Buzzards Bay Project, serves as a guidance document for local governments on how to implement strategies to protect water quality in the bay.

Specifically, the plan outlines several action plans designed to tackle the causes of nonpoint-source pollution. One goal is to prevent or minimize any new, direct storm-water discharges into the bay from new subdivisions. In the case of one local government, this meant reducing allowable density of single-family homes in a yet-to-be developed area to lots of 70,000 square feet, or a little more than 1.5 acres. The Buzzards Bay project is working with other local governments to implement strategies that limit the number of septic systems and to adopt bylaws that

strengthen their wetlands regulatory authority. The plan for Buzzards Bay serves as a model for other organizations participating in the National Estuary Program.

Sustainability in coastal areas requires a modification of our patterns of living, consumption, and land development. The regulations put in place must continue to balance the economic needs of the community and respect the rights of property owners. But policies must also reflect the fact that destruction of wetlands, beaches, and estuaries will-in the long run-cost taxpayers billions of dollars in pollution cleanup, storm damage, and other negative consequences. These billions would not have to be spent if only good planning could minimize the effects of development and allow natural processes to occur. ◊

isolates these communities, diminishes genetic integrity and viability within species, imperils species that have highly specialized requirements, and encourages exotic and opportunistic species to immigrate and compete for

scarce resources.

In the midst of this teeming fertility, pervasive slaughter, and encroaching fragmentation, debate on preserving nature's store of biological diversity, or biodiversity, remains fixed on individual species. Those species with symbolic stature or political utility attract the spotlight. As a result, the stale air of impasse has settled around the re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act, the nation's flagship for guarding biological treasures. Arguments tend to revolve around the costs and benefits of saving illuminated species like the spotted owl, condor, and snail darter.

True biodiversity occupies a more generous realm. It refers to the full sweep of intricate processes within ecological systems, or ecosystems, and habitats. It provides sufficient redundancy for organisms to adapt to the evolution and shocks in their environment and sufficient variety to resist inbreeding within isolated populations. In The Diversity of Life, Harvard professor and prize-winning author E.O. Wilson defines biodiversity as "the variety of organisms considered at all levels, from genetic variants belonging to the same species through arrays of species to arrays of genera, families, and still higher taxonomic levels."

Managing vast arrays of life forms with only the blunt instrument of the Endangered Species Act violates Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety. Derived from cybernetic theory, this law says the repertoire of responses an entity can make to its complexity reflects the complexity of that environment. The Law of Requisite Variety implies that a system of strategic controls within the universe of biodiversity-promoting

instrumentalities succeeds insofar as it develops a level of complexity similar to that posed by the universe of threats to biodiversity. In these terms, the federal Endangered Species Act, however important in limited

applications, constitutes a clumsy response to the complex dilemmas found in the real world of biodiversity.

Fortunately, the variety of responses to those dilemmas evolves more rapidly than the pace and sophistication of legislative process. On a number of fronts-publications, scientific investigations, community projects, school curricula, litigation, state initiatives the campaign to save the world's biodiversity is beginning to use a wider assortment of techniques and tactics.

Scientific interest has recently focused on mitigating techniques, especially the wildlife corridor, a variation on "greenways," which have appeared in hundreds of local communities and states. Most greenways are designed for human use and enjoyment-typically, an abandoned railroad right-of-way converted to a recreational trail. Wildlife corridors are reserved for plant and animal communities—either to expand ranges and facilitate migrations or encompass shifting habitats under conditions of rapid environmental change, such as global warming. Wildlife corridors serve as "geneways." For example, birds that are unable to survive in a shrunken forest reserve are, nevertheless, able to participate fully in the isolated ecosystem by migrating along forest corridors between reserves. When two or more fragments are linked, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a depleted and simplified exosphere, the mandates of sustainable development, raised to an ethical imperative by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, validate the use of coherent networks of ecological corridors to save what is still pristine, restore what is still retrievable, and connect what is still green. To bind

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-Chapter 15

remaining wetlands and wildlife reserves, new restorations and nature development areas, and mediating corridors and buffer zones into an extensive system of linear greenways is to create a biological infrastructure for an entire region or country.

Railroad and highway corridors often have biological as well as recreational values. David Burwell, president of the American Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, learned about the potential of wildlife corridors 15 years ago when he received urgent appeals from an official of the South Dakota Wildlife Federation. "He told me the Milwaukee Road Railroad's proposed abandonment of 600 miles of right-ofway would seriously endanger South Dakota pheasants," Burwell recalls. "More than 90 percent of these birds are hatched in the state's railroad and highway corridors. The rest of their habitat has long since been plowed under."

Similar benefits are provided by natural corridors that have suffered relatively little from human occupation or manipulation. In the Southeast, the private purchase of the Pinhook Swamp puts migrating bears out of harm's way and ensures that other plants and wildlife can move freely along a 15-mile corridor between Osceola National Forest in Florida and Okefenookee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia.

Biodiversity has recently achieved standing on its own merits. In Marble Mountain Audubon v. Rice, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held in September 1990, that a U.S. Forest Service Proposal to log the 3,325-acre Grider Creek watershed had failed to consider its impact on animals using a five-mile-wide corridor between two wilderness areas situated 16 miles apart