NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management last week announced the issuance of a final rule intended to provide states and NOAA with a more efficient process for making changes to state coastal management programs. Under the new rule, the 1996 Program Change Guidance and 2013 Addendum no longer apply.
Changes between the 2016 proposed rule and the final rule include elimination of the provision that would have allowed use of a Regional Planning Body (RPB) process to replace the program change requirements in the regulations for notifications to federal agencies and the public for the development of geographic location descriptions and changes to state lists of federal license or permit activities that describe general concurrences for minor federal license or permit activities resulting from state and federal agency agreements as part of an RPB’s ocean plan, and agreed to by NOAA through the RPB process.
In explaining the deletion of the provision and its agreement that any further RPB or other regional process should not suffice for CZMA and NOAA public notification requirements, NOAA said that neither the Northeast nor Mid-Atlantic RPB proposed geographic location descriptions or changes to state federal consistency lists, and highlighted the 2018 Executive Order that revoked and replaced the 2010 National Ocean Policy and disbanded RPBs.
