| Total miles of U.S. coastline | 362 |
| Total spatial area under consideration | 1,086 square miles |
Activity lead contact information:
Paul Klarin
Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD)
Paul.Klarin@state.or.us
www.oregonocean.info
www.oregon.gov/LCD/OCMP/docs/Ocean/otsp_5.pdf
Activity implementation: In March 2008, Governor Kulongoski of Oregon directed that the Territorial Sea Plan (TSP) be amended to guide the siting of ocean renewable energy facilities and that the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) lead this work. Phase I, completed in November 2009 after extensive engagement of stakeholders and affected agencies, created a new chapter 5 to the TSP, which spells out the policies, standards, and procedures that state agencies will use to approve new energy development. The second phase of the TSP amendment process, currently underway, is to conduct a spatial analysis, or mapping, of ocean uses and ecological resources through a public process to identify and allocate areas within the territorial sea that are appropriate for renewable energy development.
Activity status: Ongoing
State(s) involved: Oregon
Regional association involvement: Members of the West Coast Governors’ Agreement (WCGA) on Ocean Health
Partners: The TSP amendment process will be led by the Ocean and Coastal Services Division of the DLCD, the Oregon Coastal Management Program (OCMP). The public process is conducted by two independent stakeholder advisory bodies, the Ocean Policy Advisory Council (OPAC) and the Territorial Sea Plan Advisory Committee. For a list of the parties involved in each process, please visit the following website: www.oregon.gov/LCD/OPAC/about_us.shtml.
Activity description: In 1991, the Oregon legislature established OPAC to give coordinated policy advice on ocean matters to the governor, state agencies, and others, and to develop recommendations for an Oregon TSP, which was adopted in 1994. In March 2008 an executive order directed OPAC and the Oregon DLCD to recommend proposed amendments to the state’s TSP concerning provisions on wave energy siting projects. On November 5, 2009, the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission, which has oversight of DLCD, adopted part 5 of the TSP to provide guidance and specify areas for the development of renewable energy facilities. The amendment adding part 5 to the TSP has set in motion a second phase of the process: the mapping of commercial and recreational fishing grounds, marine habitat, important marine ecosystems, and other existing uses, and has triggered related spatial analysis, data collection, and compilation tasks that for the first time will provide a spatial basis for the TSP. This spatial data will also enable the state to designate spatially explicit sites for renewable energy development as future amendments to the plan.
Jurisdictions: State
Objectives: Economic, environmental
Ocean uses to be managed: Renewable energy, research areas
Ocean uses to be considered / analyzed: Dredging, fishing, marine transportation, pipelines and cables, ports, protected areas, recreation, renewable energy, sand and gravel mining, research areas
Management considerations:
Additional uses: The existing TSP manages uses that are to be considered during the TSP amendment process (see above), except aquaculture (which is not currently occurring), military zones, and sewage.
Enabling authority: Executive order, existing legislation
Priority legislation:
Committed resources: OCMP devoted approximately 2 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions during the past two years in support of the TSP amendment process, with a likely increase of 1 FTE required in 2011. OCMP staff members depend on infrastructure and technical capacity that the program has acquired or built through means outside of the regular work program of the state. OCMP is also managing a $100,000 study for an online visualization system to display and report on the data and information being evaluated as a part of the TSP amendment process. To complete that work, Ecotrust, a nonprofit organization, has been hired to produce an Oregon-specific iteration of MarineMap.
The Oregon legislature supported phase I of the TSP amendment and will continue to support the data collection and mapping phase, as well as a marine reserve process and seafloor mapping program.
Public participation: Public participation is involved in all stages of the planning process. Stakeholders have been involved as well.
Plan evaluation and adaptation process: The TSP amendment 5 requires state and federal agencies to use adaptive management when making decisions to authorize the siting, development, operation, and decommissioning of renewable energy facilities within the territorial sea. No set revision timeline is mandated; amendments are made as needed.
Next steps: The TSP amendment process is becoming more commonly seen as coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP), and it relies on the use of digital data that can be used to create map overlays for different types of spatial information.
Marine ecosystem mapping – DLCD is working with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) to inventory and acquire the data layers and information important for the protection of marine ecosystem function, diversity, and marine habitat. This work is being funded by the department’s NOAA grant. ODFW will compile the relevant data from state and federal resource agencies and other sources such as regional research programs and universities.
Fishing effort mapping – The Territorial Sea Plan and goal 19, Ocean Resources, require Oregon state agencies to protect areas important to fisheries, including commercial, charter, and recreational for different sectors and ports. To apply this protection through the planning process, the state must be able to identify and locate these areas spatially using data derived and contributed by the fishing communities. This is being achieved through a series of projects currently being conducted by Ecotrust, a nonprofit research and consulting organization, working with local coastal port fisheries groups.
Human use (regulated and managed) mapping – DLCD is assembling data layers of existing managed and regulated uses. These include areas such as marine and ocean shore parks, wildlife refuges and other resources, conservation or recreational areas that are owned and managed by the state and federal government, and areas that have been permitted for specific uses, such as dredge material deposits sites and marine fiber optic cable crossing corridors. Navigation corridors and tow lanes will also be mapped. The department will conduct a project to inventory areas used for nearshore research, including the location of scientific instrumentation and cables that are attached to the seafloor. The department will also provide the various state and federal jurisdictional boundary lines.
Recreational ocean use mapping – Surfrider Foundation, working in partnership with Ecotrust and Natural Equity, is collecting information on recreational uses on behalf of the State of Oregon to help guide the placement of wave energy facilities in ways that reduce the impacts to recreational users.
Nearshore Research Inventory Database Project – DLCD has initiated a project to inventory the nearshore research use of the ocean for scientific evaluation of the environment. As part of Oregon’s effort to assess research in the nearshore environment, a survey of academic and governmental institutions will be detailed in a comprehensive survey of ocean research activities within Oregon’s territorial sea and over the continental shelf. It is envisioned that the completed inventory would be compiled as a publicly accessible database that would be hosted by the Department of Land Conservation and Development. The inventory data will be made available online via relevant websites such as the Oregon Coastal Atlas and the Oregon Ocean Information website.
CMSP in Oregon has had an initial focus on marine protected areas and energy development. Over the next several years, several of these activities will merge into a single framework for coordinating, financing, and implementing marine spatial planning and management.
Note: “Numerous local, regional, and national initiatives relating to the siting of ocean uses have arisen in recent years pertaining to Oregon. Though emerging from different quarters and for differing reasons, together they are stimulating movement toward marine spatial planning in Oregon” (Marine Spatial Planning in Oregon: An Emerging Story, proceedings of a forum hosted by The Nature Conservancy, September 10, 2009). Two projects are now being focused on as leading CMSP in the state: amending the territorial sea plan to provide for responsible renewable energy development, and the design of a state marine reserve network. It is anticipated that these various efforts will be incorporated into Oregon’s Territorial Sea Plan, which will function as the single marine spatial planning framework for the state.