Congress: Support Coastal Zone Management

The Coastal Zone Management Program provides critical funding and technical assistance to state governments to protect and promote the coastal zone. Thirty four states and territories rely on the CZM program’s federal support to stimulate coastal economies and jobs, protect vital shoreline habitats and natural features, enhance public access and recreation, defend against coastal storms and flooding, and support local, actionable science. The entire nation relies on the program to support the over $359 billion of our GDP that is generated on the coast.

Now the White House has declared its intention to completely cut all funding to the CZM program, as part of a larger proposal to ransack the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that also includes gutting vital research, estuarine and marine reserves, education, and Sea Grant.

The CZM program was created by the Coastal Zone Management Act in 1972. It acknowledges that states manage and regulate their own coasts, and achieves national goals by striking a balance between states’ rights and federal financial/technical support that other federal programs have striven to emulate ever since. The CZM program has a proven track record of success, and coastal communities rely on it to confront the unique challenges of building productive coastal economies and preserving natural resources that protect and sustain those economies. States match investment in our coasts through the CZM virtually dollar for dollar, demonstrating how indispensable it is to the States. Ending the program now would throw away decades of successful local-state-federal collaboration and leave coastal communities isolated at a time when investment in our coastal communities, infrastructure, and economies is more important than ever.