The Northeast Regional Ocean Council today held a virtual meeting to discuss budget and programmatic challenges and opportunities associated with the pandemic and recent election, general updates, special topics including coastal resilience and ocean planning, and NROC Committee updates.
During the meeting, it was noted that federal legislation to authorize and fund regional ocean partnerships passed the Senate Commerce Committee last year and has attracted bipartisan support. While one noted the bill was unlikely to pass the current Congress, another noted that it could make it through due to support across both sides of the aisle.
Others discussed challenges associated with the pandemic, such as the inability to hold in-person meetings, as well as budget challenges. State and federal representatives also shared their priorities, including ocean planning, supporting offshore wind development, ocean monitoring, data efforts through the regional data portal, projects to address coastal hazards and living shorelines, coastal resilience, among others. A representative from Connecticut said they would like to see “the ocean planning parts that were lost reinstated,” and voiced support for a prohibition on oil and natural gas development in New England.
NROC is a regional ocean partnership formed in 2005 by the Governors of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut to provide a voluntary forum for states and federal partners to coordinate and collaborate on the development of goals and priorities and address regional coastal and ocean management challenges with creative solutions that support balanced uses and conservation of the Northeast’s ocean and coastal resources.
