Getting it right: The Mass. draft ocean management plan
10/11/09 15:36 Filed in: Environment
Since June this plan has been circulating in draft form for the public’s consideration. The nearly two-volume tome is rich in data, but many fear it doesn’t go far enough to protect the Commonwealth’s more delicate marine assets—the so-called “special, sensitive or unique” (SSU) resources the plan identifies.
“The big problem with the plan—it is not really a plan,” said Mason Weinrich, executive director and chief scientist of the Whale Center of New England, based in Gloucester. “What they have done is gather a really valuable series of data sets to understand where these areas may be. But there isn’t really any more protection than what was already there.”
Many of the SSU resources, which include the habitat areas for humpback, fin and right whales, eelgrass and the roseate tern, fall within a designated “multi-use” region where development may occur, such as community wind projects (of ten turbines or less), extraction of sand and gravel for beach nourishment and the laying of pipelines.
“We’re dealing with a species [right whale] that is at the knife-edge of extinction that uses Commonwealth waters,” Weinrich said. “I’m shocked that more protection wasn’t offered.”
In 2008, Massachusetts’ legislators passed the Oceans Act, which required the drafting of an ocean management plan and the formation of an advisory commission and a science advisory council in support of this goal. These councils solicited data and input from a wide range of organizations, including the Massachusetts Marine Trades Association, the New England Marine Fisheries Council, the Massachusetts Audubon Society and Neptune LNG, LLC.
The resulting plan divides the management area into three parts: About 89 percent will be open to multiple water-dependent uses, two percent is reserved for large-scale commercial wind projects and roughly 8 percent is a zone located off of Cape Cod where development will be prohibited.
The SSU resources make up just over 56 percent of the multi-use area.
There are also three areas within the “multi-use” region reserved for potential future wind, tidal and wave energy projects—one is located south of Gloucester near Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, one is located near Newburyport, and the third is located off of Cape Cod.
This leaves a vast majority of the state’s waters open to discussion.
“Right now it is 100 percent that is a shooting match,” said Bill Adler, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “They knocked out some, but everything else in the water, which is where most people are, is still a shooting match.”
The fishing and lobster industry is particularly concerned about the “hard and complex bottoms” that have been given the SSU classification. These areas of the ocean floor include cobble and other rocky areas that make for ideal lobster habitats. They are also where cod lay their eggs. He pointed, in particular, to cobble mining and the conflicts it has caused in the past between the industry and the state.
“They designate it, and say, yeah, this is important. But there doesn’t seem to be any specific control in an area like that,” Adler said.
Still, he and others concerned with the protection of these resources are not necessarily calling for the addition of more prohibited areas.
“We don’t want so much that is concrete in there that you can’t move, but you don’t want to leave too many holes through which people can slip,” Adler said.
So just how do you strike such a delicate balance?
Deerin Babb-Brott, assistant secretary for Oceans and Coastal Zone Management, said the intent of the plan was to allow for flexibility. So while the plan details the various interests—commercial and recreational fishing, for example—it makes no assumption that one use is more important than another in that multi-use region.
“We weren’t comfortable with adding up the points and saying ‘whoever gets more points wins,’” Babb-Brott said.
Babb-Brott could not say specifically whether or how the plan may be modified, and the comment period is still open—the last day to submit comments is November 23. But he emphasized an ongoing commitment of the plan to respect the idea of the Commonwealth waters as a public commons.
“We all own a piece of the water out there,” he said. “The intent of the plan was not to choke out human interests. It was to have a plan in place and to have data to inform decisions.”
And when it comes to these specially-designated resources, the plan raises the threshold for developing in areas where they exist, but stops short of prohibiting it. Instead, it asks that prospective developers avoid the areas where possible, minimize impact when not, and mitigate any damage they do cause.
Priscilla Brooks, director of the Ocean Conservation Program for the Conservation Law Foundation, who refers to these assets as “the crown jewels of the Massachusetts coastline,” is supportive of the flexibility of the plan, and believes it is crucial to move forward with renewable energy sources--but in an environmentally sound way.
The problem, Brooks said, is in the proposal standard. “It’s not enough to just show you can’t build anywhere else.”
For development within an SSU habitat, the Conservation Law Foundation is suggesting a three-part test based on the “rebuttable presumption” that a more environmentally-friendly location exists: (1) Prove there is no less-damaging, practicable alternative; (2) show the project will not cause a significant, adverse effect on the resource; and (3) illustrate how the public benefit of the project outweighs any damage to the resource.
There is also a safety valve included both in the Foundation’s proposal, and in the current language of the draft plan: A developer may introduce new data that demonstrates the state’s data is incorrect or outdated in support of a proposed project.
“Where this plan really advances ocean management is it has created this detailed data base,” Brooks said. “And the state can use that to more specifically scope out how they want to use it in an environmental review process.”
But she added that what is proposed now is really no more stringent that the current requirements that apply to any of the state’s waters.
“If you don’t adequately protect these places then you haven’t balanced development,” Brooks said. “Now, it’s too open ended.”
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