The Trump Administration is threatening California’s ability to protect its coastline unless the state makes concessions on environmental issues. Some projects in the Tri-Counties are at the heart of the dispute.
The threats come in a draft report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Los Angeles Times obtained the draft through a public records request.
The government is demanding what it calls “corrective action” by some state agencies over what it terms a pattern of jurisdictional and regulatory overreach.
The threat targets a decades-old collaborative approach to managing environmental issues involving the state and federal government along the state’s coastline.
"There's a federal law in place called the Coastal Zone Management Act that sets up a really important dynamic for the federal government to coordinate with the state when it comes to federal activities, or federally authorized activities that affect the state's coastal resources," said Maggie Hall, who is Deputy Chief Counsel with the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center. For decades, the EDC has been involved in legal efforts to protect the environment in the region.
"The state has a right to review the federal activity for consistency with the state's certified coastal management program," said Hall. "This is essential because it gives the state the ability to use their expertise to apply the policies they've developed through their management of the state's coast to determine whether the federal government's activities are consistent with these important policies. And, if it isn't consistent, they can actually object to the federal project."
Hall added that the act has worked well over the decades.
"California has a longstanding strong record here, so we have been deemed a leader when it comes to management of coastal resources, and nothing has changed," said Hall. "The state is excelling in its implementation of this program."
But the draft NOAA report takes aim at the state. It cites what it calls hostility and political bias towards oil and gas projects, offshore drilling, and SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. It also notes opposition to Sable Offshore Corporation’s restart of an oil pipeline which ruptured on the Gaviota Coast in 2015.
The State Coastal Commission unsuccessfully sought more environmental review of a major ramp-up of the number of SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
During a Commission meeting, members made political comments about SpaceX founder Elon Musk. As part of a lawsuit settlement, the Commission apologized to SpaceX and Musk and said it would keep politics out of its decision-making process. But the Commission now faces a new demand to meet with SpaceX officials on the issue.
The draft report also calls with state officials to meet with Sable officials over what it called “regulatory burden and overreach.” After Sable failed to get state approval to restart the pipeline, it turned to the federal government, which used a 1950s law to allow operations to resume. The federal government has also threatened to use eminent domain to take state and private land needed to keep oil flowing if property owners shut down operations through legal action.
"The federal government is really going above and beyond to try to help industry here, and inappropriately using its authority to undermine this really important program that protects our coast," said the EDC attorney,
As leverage to get concessions, the federal government is threatening to blow up the long-standing state-federal partnership protecting the California coastline.
"The federal government is threatening to take away funding as well as state power to review these federal actions through their certified coastal policies, " said Hall.
For now, it's still just a draft report.
Hall talked about what’s next.
"It's a little too soon to tell, because there's a list of pretty detailed demands in this," said Hall. "The first step will be to see how the state will respond to this and if the government can come up with a way to resolve this issue before the federal government pursues a final determination. If the federal government proceeds, it could certainly end up in litigation, and the question of whether it (the federal government) exceeded its authority would end up in court."
The three agencies involved with the Coastal Zone Management Act have until November 16 to respond to the draft.
